


woodsmoke on the wind

by taywen



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Agnieszka: you mean idiots to lovers?, Alosha: bold of you not to include yourself among the idiots, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Intrigue of Various Sorts, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Rivals to Lovers to Bitter Exes Masquerading as Rivals to Lovers, Surprise Hobbies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27790726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: “I suppose the successful navigation of court life would resemble arcane scheming to you.” Despite the words, Solya’s tone was almost teasing.“I have better things to waste my time on,” Agnieszka said loftily.Seven years on, Agnieszka and Sarkan visit Kralia for the winter.
Relationships: Agnieszka/The Dragon | Sarkan, Agnieszka/The Dragon | Sarkan/The Falcon | Solya, Agnieszka/The Falcon | Solya, The Dragon | Sarkan/The Falcon | Solya
Comments: 17
Kudos: 46
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	woodsmoke on the wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tiarn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiarn/gifts).



> I hope you have a lovely Yuletide, Tiarn!

It took the combined efforts of Kasia, Stashek and Marisha to convince Agnieszka to leave the valley, and that only after seven years had passed since—since the Wood and the queens and all of that senseless death.

Well, in truth it took only a letter from Kasia, asking her to come to Zamek Orla for the winter: her dearest friend had always respected Agnieszka’s opinion of the court, and never actually asked if or when Agnieszka would come visit, though it was a common refrain in Stashek and Marisha’s missives.

“You _want_ to go back to Kralia?” Sarkan grumbled, when she raised the subject with him. The harvest had passed just the week before, and she knew he would likely have a hundred different things to prepare for an extended trip away from the valley: better to tell him early.

Agnieszka blinked. “You don’t?” He’d certainly been in a hurry to return and scour away any vestiges of the Wood’s corruption, though he’d seemed content to remain in the valley ever since he’d returned to collect the taxes.

Sarkan’s lips thinned, as if he knew the bend of her thoughts, but all he said was, “All the courtiers will be back in residence now that the king has returned from Gidna.”

“And Kasia and Alosha,” Agnieszka said pointedly.

Sarkan scowled. “That means that cawing crow will be present as well.”

“Is there a Crow? I haven’t met them.” Nor had she heard of them, but aside from stories of the Dragon, only tales of the Falcon had made their way to the valley. She’d never heard of the Sword, or the Willow, or the Splendid—or the poor Owl—before she’d arrived in Kralia.

“I meant Solya, obviously,” Sarkan snapped. “Are you being deliberately obtuse, you impossible woman—?”

Agnieszka hummed distractedly and wandered off to the kitchen, leaving Sarkan to grumble to himself. He hadn’t said no—he was almost incapable of saying no to her, she’d found with some delight within a year of his return to the valley—so she ought to see about distributing some of the stores to the villages, since this year they wouldn’t be holding the Midwinter feast that had become tradition since his return.

* * *

Agnieszka almost didn’t recognize Stashek and Marisha when she saw them again. Seven years was a long time, especially for a child, and though she had noticed that time passing in the way her nieces and nephews and all the other children in the villages of the valley seemed to grow and change even over the course of a week, the differences between the royal children she remembered and the young king and princess she stood before now seemed exceptionally stark.

Then Marisha ran over to Agnieszka, coltish from a recent growth spurt, and flung her arms around her. Agnieszka only had to bend a little to return her enthusiastic embrace, trying not to spread the dust that coated her skirt onto Marisha’s far more expensive dress.

Being presented at court was as tedious as she remembered, but Sarkan took the brunt of the courtiers’ curiosity, leaving Kasia free to lead Agnieszka a discreet distance away. Kasia still kept a close eye on the rest of the throne room, her gaze roving constantly over the occupants and checking frequently on the young king.

An older man, around the age of the previous king, sat on an ornate chair just a step below the dais of the throne. He had the same fair hair as Princess Malgorzhata, peppered through with grey: he must have been Stashek and Marisha’s grandfather, the archduke of Gidna and also Stashek’s regent.

“You look well,” Kasia said quietly. Her smile was just as Agnieszka remembered, the sight of it easing something that had been slowly winding tighter every time she saw her own aging family, and clenched harder still upon meeting Stashek and Marisha again. Kasia herself was basically unchanged, aside from the rich uniform in Polnya’s colours that she now wore, and the unadorned sword at her side. The blade was probably Alosha’s work; the other witch looked more or less the same as well—the horrid burns from the Wood’s attack had healed into scars, though even those were faded by time.

“And you. Though I notice you’ve yet to take a husband,” she added teasingly: it seemed like every letter mentioned another proposal that Kasia had received.

Kasia rolled her eyes. “Don’t you start too. Not that _you_ have a leg to stand on. At least I remain unattached.” She looked pointedly at Sarkan.

Her parents had been dropping hints about that, actually. She’d put them off by pretending not to notice, but her mother had started to get that gleam in her eye, so they’d probably take a more direct approach soon. Agnieszka had thought she might get some of her own back by teasing Kasia, but perhaps that had been a mistake. “We’re not the marrying type,” she said firmly. “Now point out the count or whomever that offered you an entire rose garden as a courting gift.”

Kasia gave her a look, making it plain that Agnieszka’s attempt to change the subject had not gone unnoticed and was merely being humoured. “The man in blue, next to—”

“—the lady with that incredible hair?” Court styles were always elaborate, but this arrangement was something else entirely. Agnieszka quickly averted her eyes, in case it gave her magic _ideas_ the next time she needed to use _vanastalem_ , which would probably be for the banquet tonight.

“Next to Countess Boguslava, yes.”

“He looks like a boy!” Agnieszka hissed.

“He’s eighteen, Nieshka.” Kasia was entirely too amused at her expense. “You and I don’t look any older.”

“We have an air of maturity,” Agnieszka insisted. Like the expression lines at Sarkan’s eyes and around his mouth, the only outward sign that he was any older than his twenties. Of course, as soon as he opened his mouth to deliver a lecture or a scathing remark or a scathing lecture, the illusion of a young man was swiftly dispelled.

Kasia made a polite, disbelieving noise. “That’s just my uniform.”

“Surely there are some eligible maidens that you could court?”

Kasia’s expression turned wistful. “My duties keep me busy. Perhaps when the king reaches his majority.”

“That’s another five years, at least,” Agnieszka protested.

“I may be getting older, but I’m not aging. I have time.” She sounded far more at peace with that fact than Agnieszka herself. She could not—refused to—reconcile with Sarkan and Alosha’s pragmatic, borderline ruthless, views on the matter. Kasia laughed at her scowl, the sound honest and clear, drawing the eyes of the nearby courtiers. If she was abashed by their curious looks or censuring glares, she gave no sign of it. “Thank you for worrying about me, Nieshka, but I’ll be fine.”

Agnieszka eyed her: was Kasia just putting up a brave front like she had when they were children? When everyone _knew_ the Dragon would choose her, and had already written her off as taken, for almost as long as they could remember?

Kasia’s grin faded, shifting into the small, fond smile that she reserved exclusively for Agnieszka. “I have missed you, Nieshka. I don’t think anyone knows me half as well as you do.”

Agnieszka smiled back. “Well, most people have never cast _Luthe’s Summoning_. But of course I missed you too, Kasia.”

* * *

Solya found them—or, more accurately, they stumbled upon Solya—when they escaped the press of the main ballroom after the banquet, searching for some space to breathe. The hired musicians were on their third recitation of a song about the archduke’s heroic deeds, and the song had been tiresome enough the first time it played; it was as good a time as any to slip away.

Sarkan led her to some room or other tucked away from the main corridors of the castle; doubtless he knew its name and function, but Agnieszka didn’t care about that: there was a lit fireplace and places to sit, so she was perfectly content.

The room also contained Solya, sitting in a stuffed chair near the fire with a huge tome in his hands. Unlike Kasia and Alosha, he _did_ seem changed. His hair was all the same dark shade, no longer dyed pale, and his robes were not so—ostentatious. They were still obviously made from some rich fabric, but designed for comfort rather than to display glittering wealth in embroidery or gems.

A burst of laughter from further down the hall, back in the direction of the party, spurred Agnieszka to push Sarkan fully into the room—he’d stopped on the threshold—and close the door behind them. She was sorely tired of socializing with courtiers; better to have only Solya, for all his ridiculous posturing, to contend with.

“Pardon the intrusion,” she said, already dragging Sarkan over to the couch opposite Solya.

That stopped Solya’s startled blinking. “I suppose I must,” he said smoothly, giving her that thin smile he’d favoured around courtiers. As if Agnieszka hadn’t seen him with all that artifice stripped away, first on that horrid day they’d brought Queen Hanna’s body out of the Wood, and then after his and Marek’s stupid, wasteful assault on the tower. Perhaps the fashions had merely changed, and dyed hair was no longer in vogue.

“What are you doing here?” Sarkan demanded, sitting down stiffly beside her. She glanced at him sidelong, not that he noticed.

“In Kralia, or in this forgotten little room?” Solya’s tone was all sincere confusion, which was how she knew it was false: he’d never admit to not knowing something in truth. “I live here in Zamek Orla, unlike certain other wizards in service to the king.”

“How have things been here?” Agnieszka asked, before a bristling Sarkan could retort and escalate matters even further. “Sarkan said he’d rooted out the rest of the Wood’s corruption, but its influence can be insidious.”

Sarkan cast her a look of outrage, but Solya only shrugged. “I’ve seen nothing amiss.”

She put her hand on Sarkan’s knee, gripping just firmly enough to be felt; she could just imagine the scathing retort about Solya’s sight ready to trip off his tongue. “That is good news. I’ve been cleansing the heart-trees in the Wood, but I don’t know how many more remain.”

Solya’s gaze dropped to her hand for the barest instant before flicking back up to her face. “Is that what you’ve been up to these past seven years?”

“More or less.” She’d found the time to drag Sarkan out of the tower, to various festivals and celebrations in the villages, or to her cottage in the Wood. He always protested the latter more vociferously—unable to forget a century of enmity with the Wood—but she always made him put aside his reservations swiftly enough. And he in turn made certain that she spent a similar duration in the tower as well.

“I suppose Sarkan has been assisting you in this endeavour,” Solya mused. “The rumour at court is a bit different, however. No one has quite forgotten that he left Kralia to collect the taxes and then simply—didn’t return.” He smiled thinly at Sarkan. “But I know you would never use any of the girls you took on so abominably.”

Sarkan bristled all over again, but Agnieszka just tightened her grip on his knee. It was a particularly sore point for him—more so that the villagers had thought the same of him than any of the frivolous courtiers—but to react would only give Solya what he wanted. “You’re right, he wouldn’t,” she agreed calmly. “And the nature of our relationship is none of your business.”

Solya’s eyes flashed, something like anger flickering briefly into view. “Yes, that has been made abundantly clear. Now, I’ve a commission to complete for a certain archduke; if you’ll excuse me.” He slipped away into the shadows without waiting for a reply, the cool, cutting breeze of his presence disappearing.

“What was that about?” Agnieszka asked; he’d never been shy about needling Sarkan in front of her before, but his reaction seemed out of proportion.

“I haven’t the slightest idea. And what kind of _commission_? That insipid fool is no artisan.” Sarkan looked and sounded thoroughly disgruntled.

“Well, he does have a certain eye for aesthetics.” He and Marek had always been turned out to perfection when the occasion called for it, their outfits complementary and ostentatious.

“ _Had_. Did you see the monk’s habit he was wearing?”

Agnieszka only looked at him in disbelief, not that he seemed to notice. He was too busy staring broodingly at the chair Solya had recently vacated. Certainly, she had no knowledge of current court fashions, but Solya’s robes were a far cry from the habit Father Ballo had always worn. Not that she thought a person’s clothes mattered, particularly; that was Sarkan’s purview. But usually he wasn’t so scathing either.

“At least he hadn’t spilled anything upon them,” she said pointedly: her own sleeve was splattered with soup. That hadn’t been her fault, for once—her neighbour at the banquet earlier had dropped their spoon in shock at some comment Agnieszka had made about growing up in Dvernik. Yet they all seemed to think _she_ was the sheltered one.

Sarkan turned his gaze to her at last, fixing her sleeve with an unfavourable eye. “Yes, he does have the sense to keep his clothes clean.”

Agnieszka rolled her eyes. Now that she’d accepted and come into her magic, she wasn’t half so clumsy as she’d once been. Of course, she still didn’t care much for keeping her skirts clean, a fact that Sarkan had somewhat grudgingly accepted.

“He forgot his wine, though.” The mostly-full bottle sat abandoned on the small table next to his chair, alongside a drained glass.

Sarkan summoned the bottle into his hand with a gesture, when it would have only been a step or two to reach it by foot. Agnieszka restrained herself from rolling her eyes again, somehow. “He always had good taste in wine,” Sarkan conceded, opening the bottle and taking an experimental swig. He _would_ complain about untidy clothes and then drink straight from the bottle. And probably look at her in annoyance if she pointed out the contradiction.

“Did you drink wine with him tucked away in rooms like these frequently, before you took up guardianship of the Wood?” Agnieszka teased.

Sarkan paused in examining the label, going entirely still; his eyes didn’t move either, so he wasn’t reading whatever was written there. “I did, actually.” Before Agnieszka could parse that unreadable tone, he took another, healthier swig from the bottle and set it aside without offering her any. His lips were stained red from the wine when he turned to her. “Why are we speaking of Solya again?”

Agnieszka tilted her head, so the half-unraveling braid of her hair fell past her shoulder. Sarkan was wild for her hair. “Because I want to hear more about your youth here—”

Sarkan growled, and kissed her, which was what she’d really wanted; she put the strange exchange aside as he pressed her back against the couch. His mouth tasted of Solya’s wine.

* * *

Agnieszka spent the next day following Kasia around as she guarded Stashek and Marisha, catching up with her and the children in quiet moments. Meanwhile, Sarkan disappeared into the depths of the Charovnikov, emerging around supper muttering about some fool who’d rearranged the collection: apparently he’d been the one to set it back to rights after Ballo’s transmogrification, but whoever had taken up the task in the intervening years used a different system of organization.

“Though at least they have not sorted the books by _colour_ ,” Sarkan added, still sore about that incident.

Agnieszka rolled her eyes. “At least whichever apprentice has so offended you likely knew their purpose,” she said pointedly. “Also, Marisha has invited us for a ride tomorrow morning and I accepted.”

Sarkan made a grumbling noise, probably still stewing about the library.

He made a similar noise when they found Solya waiting at the same place Marisha had designated the day before, but the princess arrived before the two wizards could start sniping at each other again.

“I quite like the pattern on your sleeves, Falcon,” Marisha said: they hung unevenly, the bottom half of the cuff cut into a triangular point that reached past his fingers but the top a more traditional length to allow for ease of movement; the entire edge was embroidered to resemble feathers. Fitting, given his Name, though he’d gone with a dark shade of blue rather than a more neutral colour, with gold and green accents.

Sarkan stared at this extravagant outfit stonily; Agnieszka could already imagine him making some comment about peacocks at the first opportunity.

“You are too kind, Your Highness,” Solya purred, bowing; his hair was tied back in a neat queue, rather than loose and tumbling around his shoulders as it had been two nights ago.

“I suppose guarding Her Highness is a welcome change from standing at Marek’s side,” said Sarkan.

“I hold my duty to the royal family in the highest regard. If King Kasimir wishes for me to guard the last remaining member of his family, who am I to deny him?” Solya spread his hands, the gold embroidery at his wrists glittering in the light. “I could hardly abandon him or Princess Regelinda by disappearing to my family’s estate for years.”

In her letters, Kasia had said that Solya had fallen somewhat out of the court’s favour since Stashek’s ascension. Witches and wizards were viewed with distrust at the best of times, and his involvement with Marek and Queen Hanna was considered suspect by the courtiers no matter how Solya had tried to spin it. That the precise details of what transpired during the assault on Sarkan’s tower were, well, anything _but_ precise did little to help matters. Even Stashek’s mysterious, enduring fondness for him—relayed with palpable confusion in one of Kasia’s earliest letters—was not enough to sway the rest of Polnya’s nobility.

“You are uniquely suited to serving as chaperon to the princess.”

Agnieszka frowned. “Would Kasia or Alosha not be the better choice? Since they’re women.” Not that Solya struck her as the type to take advantage of a young girl, but two days at court had already reminded her vividly of how obsessed with appearances and pretense everyone here seemed.

“The Sword gave me a sword, which Grandfather didn’t like, and he didn’t like Kasia showing me how to use it either,” Marisha reported mournfully. Then she beamed up at Solya, who had only an instant to look alarmed before she added, “But the Falcon has been teaching me how to wield a dagger!”

Solya’s smile took on a fixed quality. “Perhaps you would consider not advertising that fact quite so loudly, Your Highness,” he said mildly.

“But you said Agnieszka and the Dragon would not mind?” She turned wide, sorrowful eyes to them. “You won’t tell Grandfather, will you?”

“Of course not,” Sarkan said swiftly: he was basically incapable of turning down piteous-looking children, without the threat of Wood-corruption or similar peril to motivate him.

“Wonderful!” Marisha clapped her hands together once, then started down the hall. “We should head out before the day gets too late; I have my first lesson before luncheon.”

The horses of the royal stable were finer even than those bred in the valley by Borys of Olshanka, or so Sarkan informed her. Agnieszka had little experience with them, as the paths of the Wood were easier for her to traverse on foot. Certainly, the mare one of the stablehands led out to her was a much more impressive specimen than the old workhorse her father and brothers used to cart around the firewood. At least this mare wasn’t a trained warhorse like the one she’d ridden into the Wood with Marek and Solya and their small company of men.

They took the main road north out of Kralia. Everything was covered in a blanket of white, and the Vandalus was frozen solid, but enough time had passed since the last snowfall that the road itself had been worn clear by travelers. Marisha led them to a smaller track that headed into a modest forest that reminded Agnieszka a little of the valley, until eventually they reached a small clearing. Sunlight filtered through the bare branches, casting twisting shadows on the unsullied snow.

Marisha turned to Agnieszka and Sarkan; Solya had been riding at her side, and even now was scanning the clearing with a sharp eye as if he expected some kind of threat to emerge from the trees.

“In truth, I usually train with the Falcon during my morning ride. But since winter has set in, daily rides have become more difficult to justify,” she said gravely.

“So we’re to be your excuse?” Agnieszka probably shouldn’t have smiled at that, but in truth she was rather delighted by the misdirection.

“Did Solya put you up to this, Princess?” Sarkan leveled the other wizard with a distinctly unimpressed look that Solya ignored as he dismounted and moved to tie his horse to a nearby tree.

“No, of course not! He did not wish to involve you at all, but admitted that you likely would not disapprove of our training when I pressed him.” Marisha’s brows drew together. “Unless you truly do not approve? You said you would not tell Grandfather, but that is not that same.”

“A princess should know how to defend herself, Sarkan.” Agnieszka frowned, remembering Princess Malgorzhata’s fate. The same devotion to her future children would likely be expected of Marisha, as disconcerting a thought as that was. But the greatest part of the Wood’s corruption had been cleansed, so at least Marisha would not fall prey to its machinations as her mother and grandmother had.

“Obviously,” Sarkan retorted. “But surely the king agrees as well. He could mandate—”

“The regent neither agrees nor approves,” Solya said, coming back over to offer Marisha a hand down from her horse. She ignored it, sliding to the ground with a grace Agnieszka doubted she could match. “As Her Highness has said.”

“But that’s ridiculous. Surely he’s heard how his daughter—” Agnieszka glanced at Marisha, who seemed occupied with securing her horse, and continued in a quieter voice “—was killed. If Kasia hadn’t been there, the same fate would have befallen the children.”

Solya smiled thinly and said nothing as Marisha trooped back over to them. Agnieszka gaped as she suddenly produced a long knife from—somewhere within the folds of her cloak, or possibly her skirt.

“I’m ready.”

* * *

“Where did _you_ learn how to wield a knife anyway?” Sarkan asked, when they had returned to the castle once more and seen Marisha off to some lesson or other. Without the princess’ youthful exuberance to buoy the atmosphere, the strange tension between Solya and Sarkan had returned full force.

Had it been like this seven years ago and she’d been too distracted by the events that brought them all together to notice? Their rivalry—largely on Solya’s part, it had seemed—surely hadn’t been this _fraught_ back then.

“From General Aleksy of Torin,” said Solya.

The name sounded vaguely familiar; perhaps Agnieszka had once heard songs about him. Given Solya’s recent attachment to Marek’s cause and the fact that there had been no mention of this general then, presumably he was dead. So his deeds must have been noteworthy if she’d heard of them after his death.

Sarkan and Solya were having some kind of staring contest when Agnieszka finally recalled the song.

“Is that the general who drove back the Chekyans in the last war?”

Solya blinked first, turning smoothly to her. “One and the same.”

“A traveling bard sang the song of the Swordmaster and the Falcon at one of the harvest festivals when I was young. Could he truly fight with two swords?” She’d never had much interest in distant wars beyond the valley, but her brothers had been particularly struck by this image; all that winter, the youngest had begged her to find him suitable branches to use as play swords when she went out gleaning.

One side of Solya’s mouth curved up, a proud smirk that was somehow more honest than the usual razor’s edge of his smiles. “One of the better songs of his exploits, if I do say so myself. He could fight with two swords, though it was a style he reserved for tourneys and other competitions of skill. In war, maintaining formation and discipline takes precedence, and using such an unconventional technique in true battle would have disrupted the line. Though in the thick of battle, Olek was always losing his shield. It must have been by design; he preferred to use a dagger in his off-hand.”

The fondness in Solya’s face and voice, and the familiar way he spoke of the general was almost—

“Your mercurial predilections never cease to amaze me.” Sarkan paused, to let what was obviously a hit sink in: Solya’s face had gone neutral again, though Agnieszka could not say why. Solya had never had any difficulty shifting his opinions to accommodate whichever way the wind was blowing, and made no pretense of it either.

“We cannot all flee to some backwater tower at the first sign pf adversity,” Solya said, his voice distinctly colder.

“I’m hungry,” Agnieszka said loudly. It wasn’t even a lie, though it was a convenient excuse to escape the brewing argument. “I think I’ll head to the kitchens.”

“Agnieszka, no.” Solya looked and sounded unnecessarily horrified, the anger tucked away again. “You are a witch of the realm, you can send a servant for food. Or conjure it yourself.” His gaze flicked briefly to Sarkan. “Surely Sarkan taught you that much.”

“Yes, she knows all of the usual cantrips and refuses to use them.” Sarkan was already stalking off in the direction of a passing servant.

“I’m perfectly capable of walking down to the kitchens myself,” Agnieszka muttered. Or she could conjure something, though the meals produced by _lirintalem_ always seemed to lack the heartiness of real food.

“Do you even know where they are?” Solya sounded genuinely curious.

Agnieszka could not remember exactly how to get there, no. “I could find them if I had to.”

Solya raised an eyebrow. “Of course,” he agreed, though his tone suggested the opposite. “Well, I shall leave you to your repast. I imagine Sarkan’s company will be more pleasant in my absence.” His mouth twisted a little as he said that, but he was gone before Agnieszka could press him about that or any of the other questions that had arisen from the earlier conversation.

* * *

“Do you think Solya and General Aleksy were lovers?” Agnieszka blurted out as soon as they were alone in their rooms.

Sarkan gave her a scathing look the likes of which she hadn’t experienced since the first days of her apprenticeship, the kind usually followed by him demeaning her intelligence.

“Almost certainly,” he said, a little stiffly; uncharacteristically restrained, for him.

“Then he and Marek—?”

“Obviously,” Sarkan snapped: there was his usual impatience. “They were hardly _subtle_.”

“I suppose that explains why Marek was in a nightshift when I went to Solya’s room the morning of the attack.” At Sarkan’s look of baffled anger, she quickly added, “He had a dressing gown too. And trousers.”

“Why else would he be in Solya’s room in sleepwear?”

“I don’t know! His father had just been killed the day before, I thought perhaps he couldn’t sleep.” She had certainly found it impossible.

A knock on the door interrupted them, preceding a maid bearing a platter of breakfast foods who departed again almost before Agnieszka could thank her.

Sarkan picked absently at the spread, his expression distant: his usual custom when he was distracted by a new spellbook or some other project. Perhaps he’d managed to find a tome of interest despite the offensive organization of the Charovnikov. Naturally he would find that superior to discussing Solya any further.

Agnieszka left him to it, focusing on the breakfast she’d skipped earlier. She needed to fortify herself for the rest of the day: Kasia had managed to get a free afternoon, and they meant to descend into Kralia proper to find suitable gifts for their families back home.

“Is there anything you might want?” Agnieszka asked as she drew her cloak on once more.

Sarkan blinked, his gaze shifting from the fire to her. “Pardon?”

“From the market? Is there anything you want me to pick up?” Agnieszka pulled her braid out of the collar, so it hung freely down her back; Sarkan’s blank look remained. “More extravagant coats, perhaps?” she teased. “Surely your beautiful wardrobe comes from the tailors here.”

“No.” Sarkan took a sip of his tea, then grimaced and muttered a swift heating cantrip: steam rose up from the cup immediately. “I make the majority of my clothing.”

“You—” Agnieszka barely stopped herself from gaping. “With magic?” He’d cast _vanastalem_ for her the night of the banquet, when her own attempts kept stubbornly producing the same ridiculous fashions worn by the rests of the court, and arranging her hair like Countess Boguslava’s for a special bonus. His single attempt had resulted in a dress much more to her tastes, in a style similar to what she usually work with only a few added details here and there, in a pleasant shade of green.

At the time, she’d attributed that success to the cantrip lining up more neatly with his sort of magic.

Sarkan’s eyes narrowed, his mouth pinching in irritation. “In part. Most cantrips produce results at roughly the same level of the caster’s proficiency at carrying out the task in a mundane fashion,” _as you should already know_ , his tone strongly implied, and also seemed to begrudge her for breaking this apparently cardinal rule of magic. “One’s appearance, particularly one’s clothing, is a marker of status at court, but an orphan apprentice cannot support an elaborate wardrobe on their meagre stipend from the king. One of the older apprentices suggested I take up embroidery when she saw me admiring the pattern on her dress. Since I could not fill the entirety of my days with learning magic, it seemed a logical step to learn the other aspects of tailoring.”

She really was gaping now. There was a room with a spinning wheel and a loom and various other pieces of equipment for making cloth and garments back at the tower, but she’d assumed it was for the girls that had come before her. Or _only_ for them, rather.

“Far easier to conjure an _extravagant_ new coat to my exact specifications when I know precisely what sort of work goes into it,” Sarkan concluded drily. He seemed amused rather than offended by her evident shock, at least.

She closed her mouth. “Of course,” she said, at last. There was still so much she didn’t know about him. He’d told her about his folly with Ludmila and how he’d come to be guardian of the Wood, and made mention here and there of a childhood spent in Zamek Orla, training as a wizard—and she could gather a lot from the history between him and the other witches and wizards of Polnya. But still he could blindside her without even trying.

Was this how he’d felt when he’d first taken her to the tower? But no—there would have been more irritation on his part.

“You might stop in at the booksellers; perhaps something of interest has cropped up there.”

“I’m not stopping at every bookseller!” He’d probably disparage just about every book she chose for him in any case.

Sarkan’s mouth curled up ever so slightly. “Fine, you infuriating woman.” He glanced at the clock. “What time were you to meet Kasia again?”

Agnieszka followed his gaze all in a panic, but she had a few minutes yet—assuming she did not get lost in the castle’s labyrinthine corridors. Better to take the grace period in case she did lose her way.

She paused halfway out the door. “Stay out of trouble.”

“I believe that should be my line,” Sarkan retorted.

Agnieszka grinned and shut the door.

* * *

In a surprising twist of fate, Kasia was the one who turned up late. She jogged up to the side entrance a good ten minutes after their agreed upon meeting time, her brows drawn low over her eyes.

“Is everything all right?” Agnieszka spoke softly, mindful of the servants passing through. This door must have been their designated entrance to the castle.

Kasia blinked, the dark look on her face smoothing away as if it had never been there. The smile she gave Agnieszka was perfectly lovely, and jarringly false. For a second, it was as if the Wood was looking out from behind her eyes again, trying to decide the best way to use her dear friend’s face to catch Agnieszka up too.

Then Kasia’s eyes widened, probably at whatever expression was on Agnieszka’s face. “Oh! Nieshka, I’m sorry.” Kasia hugged her; Agnieszka’s bones creaked a little in protest as she returned the embrace. “It’s—Let’s talk along the way.” She stepped back, her hands skimming down the length of Agnieszka’s arms as she went; on impulse, Agnieszka caught one in her own. The smile that earned her was Kasia’s usual fond one.

Kasia led her out of the castle by the hand, her grip careful around Agnieszka’s fingers. When they stepped past the red-stone walls, Kasia took a deep breath, some of the tension Agnieszka hadn’t even noticed lifting from her shoulders.

The street was busy with carts and riders going to and from Zamek Orla, but there weren’t many other people walking along its edges. No one was close enough to overhear them over the bustle of daily business.

Agnieszka stepped closer anyway, her hand tightening around Kasia’s. “Why were you late?” seemed a safe enough question to start with.

The frown from before settled over Kasia’s face. “The cousin of the archduke of Varsha proposed to me yesterday. He’s a marquess in his own right, and leads an influential bloc of the Magnati. The regent wanted to speak to me about my refusal. Relations with the other archduke are—strained.”

“You needn’t marry anyone for any reason,” Agnieszka hissed, angry at the very idea. Sometimes, families in the valley would promise their children to each other, but no one particularly cared if one or the other found a sweetheart elsewhere and ended up marrying them instead.

Nobles thought differently. They seemed to view their children as bargaining chips to negotiate higher status and greater influence or wealth. Marek’s cavalier assumption that she would marry him to cement his bid for the crown had infuriated her as well, but that the regent would try to use _Kasia_ like that—

“I know,” Kasia said calmly, cutting through Agnieszka’s furious thoughts. “No one truly expects me to accept any longer, if they ever did.” Her eyes were alert as ever, moving constantly over the steady stream of people, but there was a distant expression on her face. “But I don’t think they’ll stop either. The regent slipped up today, and all but admitted that he was the one who convinced the marquess to propose.”

“Does the regent not have—other children? Nieces or nephews?” Hadn’t there been talk of Stashek marrying the daughter of the archduke of Varsha, to balance the regent’s influence over him now? Was that no longer on the table?

Kasia blinked in surprise, focusing on Agnieszka. “Well—certainly, he has other eligible candidates in his extended family. But the marquess is a widower with an heir. Something would have to happen to the child for any relation of the regent’s to inherit.”

“So he’d try to marry you off instead.”

“And neatly remove me from the royal guard and curb my influence on Stashek and Marisha besides.” Kasia didn’t even sound angry about it, merely grimly resigned. Like the regent treating her as a bargaining chip, and Marisha having to sneak around behind his back just to learn to defend herself, were regrettable but inevitable facts of life.

“Does Stashek _know_ —”

“He knows. But the regent is his grandfather.” Kasia shrugged a little. “It’s only for three years more. Stashek will be sixteen then.”

“That’s young still.” The age of inheritance was twenty-one, even Agnieszka knew that.

“There’s precedence. The king before last—Stashek’s great-grandfather—was crowned in full at sixteen.”

Agnieszka frowned, but she lacked the knowledge of court and politics to dispute Kasia’s equanimity.

“Here we are,” Kasia said brightly: the market spread out before them, a riot of colour and noise. “I suppose I ought to get a gift for Tomek’s littlest one. Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”

“He and Mira had a girl.” She’d been born just before the harvest. Had the letter from her brother gotten lost? Or had Kasia been so distracted that she’d forgotten—?

“Oh, that’s right.” Kasia set off for a tailor with a purposeful stride, Agnieszka following along in her wake.

With their parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, friends, charges and lieges to purchase gifts for, they were both laden down when they finally returned to the castle. Without Kasia’s strength, they probably wouldn’t have been able to carry it all back.

“We could have hired a cart,” Kasia pointed out, amused, when Agnieszka said as much. “Or you could have used magic.”

“There’s no need to use magic for every little thing!” She was possibly a tad overwhelmed from the political intrigue that Kasia had dropped on her—which she’d asked for—and going from stall to shop and back again while they were looking for gifts.

“Of course.”

“You can’t even use magic,” Agnieszka grumbled. “Why do you sound like those annoying wizards?”

Kasia made a thoughtful noise. “I suppose I spend most of my time with them when I’m not attending my duties.” Her tone was still light, but Agnieszka knew her better than that.

She shifted some of her purchases to her other arm, so the bulk of them wouldn’t prevent her from getting near enough to bump their shoulders together. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” Kasia said. “Just your being here is like a breath of fresh air.”

“I could stay.” Corrupted heart-trees remained beneath the Wood’s boughs, but their numbers had been steadily dwindling. The malice that could arise from them had been weakened by the same measure, and most of the creatures that dwelt in the Wood were intelligent enough to know that Agnieszka would help and protect them now. The Wood could wait a year or three.

Kasia coughed, swallowing a laugh. “No. It’s not so bad as that, really.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Nieshka, don’t take this the wrong way. And by that I mean, don’t see it as a challenge to do the exact opposite out of sheer contrariness,” she added quickly. “You hate it at court.”

“It’s more tolerable this time around,” Agnieszka insisted out of sheer contrariness, though there was also some truth to it. She’d learned how to tune out the courtiers and stick close to Sarkan or Kasia. Things had been going relatively well, before this business with the regent.

“We’ll see how you feel in the new year,” Kasia said diplomatically.

Agnieszka scowled but let the matter lie.

* * *

Invitations to every event had been delivered at a frankly appalling rate ever since their arrival in the capital. A sensible person might have taken Agnieszka and Sarkan’s steadfast avoidance of every soiree, fete or whatever other unnecessary excuse for a party the courtiers came up with, as a sign to stop sending the endless stream of invitations.

So, naturally, their refusal to attend only made the court more curious and eager to snag such rare guests. Lady Alicja even sent her a handwritten invitation, as if they hadn’t both made fools of themselves seven years ago. Agnieszka left that one unanswered along with all the rest.

Tired of the steady stream of interruptions as servants or messengers delivered the missives, Agnieszka decided to refamiliarize herself with the castle’s halls. She came across three separate messengers in the span of twenty minutes, of course. She couldn’t even take a walk in peace.

After extricating herself from the latest servant, Agnieszka found herself in an unfamiliar part of the castle. The corridors were as well-maintained as any other, but long minutes passed without her seeing another soul.

Naturally, the second she had that thought, a nobleman turned the corner right in front of her, with no time to duck into a nearby room or somewhere else out of sight.

“Ah, Lady Agnieszka!”

She suppressed a grimace, barely. “Yes?” she said, with the barest modicum of politeness; all her patience had been expended on the messengers earlier. She didn’t recognize the man, who looked around the same age as her parents.

“I was just saying that we hardly see your sort around.” Whether he meant peasants or witches, she couldn’t say. Presumably witches, as there were always plenty of servants around. He barreled onward regardless, oblivious to her disdain. “I’m having a party tonight—very exclusive, if it’s the crowds that give you pause.”

“I’m busy. Now and later tonight,” she added, when he plainly meant to go on. Perhaps she should have been flattered that the man would stoop to inviting her himself rather than sending a card or a messenger. Mostly she was just annoyed. “Good day.” She stepped aside pointedly to allow him to pass; after a moment of expectant staring, he continued towards the busier areas of the castle.

She was still stewing in her annoyance as she rounded the corner and walked straight into Solya. He threw out a hand, catching them against the wall before they both fell to the floor.

“Why are you wandering the halls?” he asked, interrupting her apology. He was back to wearing relatively plain robes rather than the extravagant raiment of two days earlier, and he looked only curious.

“People keep coming up to me in the halls and inviting me places,” she said, aware of the plaintive note in her voice only after she’d spoken. “They left me alone last time.” Aside from the endless written invitations, which Solya had assured her every witch and wizard received.

Solya’s eyes flickered, his gaze slipping past her. “You’ve not heard the songs sung in your name?”

“Only in passing.” Certain villagers back home delighted in telling her about the most outrageous verses recited by traveling bards; and they probably sang even worse beyond the valley, whose inhabitants were even more protective of her than they’d been of their lord Dragon.

“The best ones are only flattering, of course.” He still seemed sincere. Without Sarkan around, he was—different. Less hostile, and—well, not _entirely_ honest, but more genuine than before, perhaps.

“I don’t care about making a name for myself,” she said.

“No, I suppose not. Then am I correct in assuming that you’re avoiding the main corridors in a bid to escape overzealous invitations?”

Agnieszka nodded. “I don’t know which rooms are open to anyone,” she admitted.

“Oh, is Sarkan unavailable to show you somewhere suitable?” Solya’s voice had an undertone she didn’t appreciate. She wasn’t in the mood to put up with Sarkan ranting about Solya, much less the reverse, so she stepped carefully around him and kept walking. She’d find her way back to the parts of the castle she knew if she continued long enough, or she could just use a spell to return to her and Sarkan’s rooms.

“Agnieszka—a moment.” Solya’s quick footsteps caught up with her a few seconds later. “There is somewhere nearby that you might appreciate.” She eyed him narrowly; he grimaced in response. “It hasn’t seen use since—Well.”

“Where?” The only places in the castle that had been affected during Agnieszka’s brief stay in the capital were all still in use—the Charovnikov and the corridors nearby had been repaired, and the chambers that had belonged to Princess Malgorzhata were now occupied by her mother.

Solya led her a few turns further down the corridor, until they came to a passage studded with windows along one wall. Agnieszka was all turned around; her internal compass hadn’t expected to find a way outside, but the windows were streaked with years of dust and impossible to see through. The light they let in was murky and dim. He stopped at a plain door, which he opened with a cantrip rather than using his own strength. The hinges creaked in protest even so, but swung wide after a moment.

The abandoned courtyard was dazzling in the winter sunlight. The blanket of undisturbed snow covered the garden completely. No one had stepped foot into the courtyard since winter’s first arrival, and probably not for far longer than that: even hidden beneath the snow, it was obviously overgrown.

“Queen Hanna’s garden,” Solya said, when she glanced back at him: she’d stepped out into the snow, heedless of the winter chill. He lingered in the doorway, the sunlight spilling past the threshold just brushing the hem of his robes; his face was all in shadow, as impenetrable as his voice.

That neatly explained why no one had set foot within in the seven years since the queen’s miraculous return from the Wood and everything that had come after. Marek had been too busy with securing her safety and his bid for the throne, and then he’d been dead.

Agnieszka knew little of Queen Hanna, beyond what she’d heard in songs, which were hardly reliable sources; there’d been nothing left of the queen by the time they’d dragged her body out of the heart-tree.

Yet even twenty-seven years on, Agnieszka could sense that someone had once tended the garden with love and diligence. The trees planted in orderly lines along the borders were all wild now, bare branches reaching up towards the cold winter sun, but without Hanna’s initial patient care they could not have thrived in the shadows of the surrounding walls.

“Do you know what it looked like, before?”

Silence unspooled between them. Agnieszka turned back to the garden. The nearest bed had been of roses, though without a constant gardener to attend them, other plants had also taken root.

She glanced over when she heard Solya’s footsteps crunching in the snow. He halted beside her, his gaze fixed on some distant point.

“I saw it just once: the king bade me attend him here.” Though he spoke quietly, his words were somehow loud in the hush of the garden. “It was autumn. The queen was pregnant. It must have been with Marek; the young prince was there also.”

“Will you show me?”

Solya blinked, returning to the present. He smiled thinly. “Of course—provided you cast a warming charm first.”

Agnieszka shivered then, just noticing the cold. She chafed her hands as she hummed the cantrip, the air around them warming to a more bearable temperature.

Solya employed the same basic working as Sarkan to build his illusion. The visual details were almost lifelike, though he did not conjure the sounds or scents that would have filled the autumn evening. The garden was all green, lit at intervals by the same spell-lights that illuminated the main areas of the castle; most of the flowers were fading or gone, and if she looked long enough she could see the overgrown, snow-covered plants beneath Solya’s illusion. At the far end of the courtyard, beneath a tree set apart from the others, a younger Queen Hanna sat upon a bench with tiny Sigmund, perhaps around the age Marisha had been when Agnieszka first met her. King Kasimir, his face smooth and hair ungreyed, was walking up the main path towards them.

Solya’s chanting came to an end before the former king reached them, and with it the illusion.

“Thank you,” Agnieszka said, when the last of it had faded. Solya inclined his head slightly in response.

The bench was a formless shape in the snow, but it was made of stone, and largely unchanged by the passage of time when Agnieszka swept the snow away with a gesture. Its surface was cold even through the layers of her skirt when she sat, but not unbearable.

Solya had followed her down the path and was staring up at the tree above. There was a nest tucked out of reach, in the crook of two branches; in spring and summer it would be completely hidden. Now, it was plain to see, and empty.

“The queen maintained the garden by herself?”

Solya blinked down at her. “How could you tell?”

“The gardens I’ve seen in other noble homes were all perfectly manicured.” They were _too_ perfect and the sight of them always annoyed her: had the nobles who paid for the garden to be kept up ever been beyond the limits of the city? It seemed impossible that they hadn’t, and yet.

“That’s—true.”

“You needn’t sound so surprised,” Agnieszka muttered.

Solya huffed a soft laugh, then stiffened.

“What is it?”

Solya smiled thinly. “Nothing you need concern yourself with; I merely lost track of time.” He gave her a shallow bow and disappeared into the shadows.

Without Solya there, maintaining the warming cantrip felt wasteful. When it faded, she rose and went back into the castle. She could return tomorrow, with a proper cloak.

* * *

A note from Stashek arrived three days later, requesting Sarkan and Agnieszka’s attendance at Count Dunin’s residence for a party the following evening. It was sitting in pride of place at their table, while all the other invitations were relegated to a tray by the door, when Agnieszka came back from Queen Hanna’s garden. Sarkan scowled a little when she showed him later that afternoon (in fairness, Agnieszka had done the same) but they couldn’t ignore the king’s command, no matter how politely worded it might be.

Only a few minutes after they arrived at the party, Sarkan was cornered by an enthusiastic and oblivious nobleman eager to hear tales of Sarkan’s years holding back the Wood. It was an unusual topic, but apparently the young man was the second son of a marquess who held land bordering the Yellow Marshes and had heard some stories about the Wood. Despite Sarkan’s increasingly pointed and rude comments, he wouldn’t be deterred and Sarkan finally started to talk about the Green Summer. That drew a crowd of curious guests, who also seemed immune or oblivious to Sarkan’s mounting annoyance.

Agnieszka had lived through that deadly season and didn’t particularly like reminders of the Wood’s corruption—especially for the sake of entertainment—so she slipped away in the press of people. Stashek had all but commanded their presence at this party, but there was no sign of the young king when she went in search of him. Perhaps it was a king’s prerogative to arrive fashionably late.

It felt nosy to open every door she came across in an attempt to find somewhere quiet to catch her breath, so she was wandering rather forlornly down a random corridor when she heard Solya’s voice. Agnieszka had seen no sign of him for the past three days; if he’d been in the Charovnikov he obviously hadn’t crossed Sarkan’s path, as he’d made no mention of it to her. Agnieszka paused outside the door; it was slightly ajar, just enough to allow a sliver of light to pass through and little else.

Probably trying to eavesdrop on Solya’s conversation was even more intrusive than exploring a strange noble’s home, but at least she knew him. And he was speaking lowly enough that she could only hear the sound of his voice and not the actual words. A few seconds later, another man spoke up; his voice was wholly unfamiliar.

“—my reputation will be protected?” the second man was saying, his words becoming audible as he drew closer to the door. Agnieszka stared at the door blankly, then looked up and down the hall. All the other doors were closed, and there were no convenient nooks or drawn curtains over a window to hide behind. Of course.

“On the contrary, it will be assured,” Solya said lightly. He blinked a bit when he found her standing guiltily in the hallway, blocking the door.

The second man recovered first. “And who might you be, darling girl?” he asked smoothly. He had striking grey eyes that traversed the length of her body with a familiarity he did _not_ deserve. Agnieszka barely resisted the urge to cross her arms in front of her. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced, which is a damn shame.”

“This is Agnieszka of Dvernik,” Solya said, putting peculiar emphasis on her name. Strangely, his companion missed the cue; there was no light of recognition on his face.

“Ah, from the countryside.” That was technically correct, but somehow she doubted he had any idea where Dvernik was. “And no escort to show you around? I would be glad to volunteer for the task, my dear—”

“ _Agnieszka_ —”

“—is not interested,” Agnieszka said flatly, to the man who hadn’t even introduced himself. “I’ve been to court before.”

The man looked her over again, then gave a short bow. “I’ll take my leave of you then, dear lady.” Without waiting for a reply, he swept off down the hall, back towards the main party.

“And who was _that_?” Agnieszka narrowed her eyes at Solya.

He sighed and stepped out into the hall, gesturing for her to precede him—in the opposite direction of the other man, and the rest of the guests. “Merely a necessary acquaintance,” Solya said lightly as they walked down the corridor. “Now in return, perhaps you’ll tell me why you’re wandering the halls of Count Dunin’s home? Avoiding people again?”

Well, he obviously had no intention of telling her. Likewise, she refused to admit to eavesdropping, especially since she’d not heard anything of value. There was something else about the short conversation that bothered her, however—

She stopped in the middle of the hallway. “You called me Agnieszka.” When Solya turned back and raised an eyebrow, she added, “You didn’t use my name—before.” It was always ‘my dear’, or ‘dear girl’, or other equally patronizing things like that.

“Would you rather I used something else?” His mouth was curved into that thin smile again, but his eyes were guarded. “I assumed it to be your preference, since you took it as your Name.”

She started to walk again, falling into step beside him. The better to watch his face when she said, “I wouldn’t have thought my preference mattered to you either way.”

Solya’s eyes flickered; he looked away, focusing ahead of them. “We did get off on the wrong foot.”

Agnieszka laughed, disbelieving. He certainly had a gift for understatement; if only he didn’t use it for shading the truth, or outright lying. “I think my intentions were clear from the beginning.” She’d only wanted to keep Kasia safe, and been willing to do just about anything to accomplish it. Which Solya and Marek had taken shameless advantage of.

Solya grimaced briefly and inclined his head. “I’ve had seven years to consider past events. I misjudged you back then. You were done a disservice. Several of them. I bear responsibility for many of them.”

Agnieszka opened her mouth, then closed it. That sounded like the beginnings of an apology. It was nothing close to a proper one, but she tried not to dwell on those hectic weeks; Solya offering some kind of apology for them had never even crossed her mind.

Though he _had_ just been scheming. She grabbed his arm and dragged him into a convenient alcove—of course she’d find one _now_ —and looked him hard in the face.

“What’s your angle?”

Solya’s eyes widened, something open and honest flashing across his face before his mask came back up. For a second, Agnieszka almost wanted to apologize, though she’d done nothing wrong. The impulse disappeared as soon as Solya opened his mouth and said, silkily, “Besides clearing the air between us? You’ve earned quite the reputation; you might call yourself Agnieszka of Dvernik, but you’re much more than a mere village girl now, so I must want something from you. I suppose merely wishing to make amends for poorly-made choices is a bridge too far.”

The last part came out bitterly, poison bleeding through the silk he’d laid over the knife of his words. Yet the venom did not seem aimed at her—but did he truly regret the choices he’d made, or simply the fact that he’d failed to achieve his goals?

“Maybe I misjudged you too,” Agnieszka said slowly. “But you have to admit my finding you scheming in some dark room, and the fact that you started to apologize immediately after, looks suspicious.”

“I need not admit to any such thing.” Despite the words, his shoulders lowered slightly.

“ _Not_ ,” she continued, raising her voice, “that it was much of an apology.”

“That is true,” Solya conceded in little more than a grudging mutter. It didn’t bode well for further admissions of wrongdoing, but then Solya squared his shoulders and met her eyes. “Agnieszka. I’m sorry for threatening Kasia’s life, and manipulating you into accompanying us into the Wood, then to the capital, and chasing the two of you halfway across Polnya. And trying to kill you when we attacked the tower. I should have taken your concerns more seriously.”

The litany felt rehearsed, and yet it hadn’t been couched in the flowery court language that Solya favoured.

“Thank you, Solya.” She let that rest, until he began to look miffed at the lacklustre reply, then added, “I don’t know if I forgive you. I don’t know that I _blamed_ you. In many ways we were just pawns of the Wood-Queen. But you also chose to ignore the signs that something was wrong.” Though even if he had agreed to cast the _Summoning_ on Queen Hanna that day, it would already have been too late.

Solya inclined his head. “I don’t intend to underestimate you again, Agnieszka.”

Her lips started to curve upward without her permission. “But you might do it anyway?” She lifted a hand when he opened his mouth once more. “I ignored the warning signs too,” she said seriously. “If I hadn’t, Kasia wouldn’t be here, and who can say what would have happened with the Wood. So I can’t regret that.”

He studied her in silence, unreadable. “You are more gracious than I deserve,” Solya said at last.

“I mean what I say.” She stepped out of the alcove and started down the hall again, Solya trailing a step or two behind her. She paused at the next intersection, glancing at Solya as he came to a stop beside her. “You didn’t answer me about that man you were speaking to,” she added.

Solya’s face scrunched up in disbelief. “He’s a minstrel. If you attended more of the parties here, you might have recognized him,” he added, obviously judging her for her lacking social life. As if he hadn’t been hiding away from the banquet on the day she and Sarkan first arrived. What had he been doing in that out-of-way corridor the day he’d shown her Queen Hanna’s garden anyway—? “I was merely suggesting which songs he might play to please his audience.”

“Is that all?” Agnieszka tucked a wayward lock of hair out of her face; it never needed more than the slightest excuse to slip the confines of her braid, never mind the more elaborate styles that went along with the extravagant court dresses. She picked a direction at random and continued walking.

“I suppose the successful navigation of court life would resemble arcane scheming to you.” Despite the words, his tone was almost teasing.

Agnieszka’s mouth twitched again, without her permission. “I have better things to waste my time on,” she said loftily. Then stopped when she found the corridor ended in a cramped set of stairs spiraling down into the dark.

“Perhaps next time you could waste your time on the other corridor. That would have led us to the garden.”

“I always get turned around in places like this,” Agnieszka muttered. What was the point of all these rooms and corridors? No one needed this much space, or all the things it took to fill it!

“Then perhaps you ought to have taken the minstrel’s offer of escort—?” Solya’s face was perfectly innocent when she turned to him with narrowed eyes.

“I thought he might be your lover,” Agnieszka said, though the thought had crossed her mind only briefly; surely they would have at least closed the door tightly were that the case.

“A _minstrel_.”

Agnieszka bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning at the expression on his face. “Too low for your standards?”

“Perhaps if he were renowned enough to be recognized by one such as yourself,” Solya said. He shook his head and turned around, taking a few steps back along the corridor only to come to a halt so abruptly that Agnieszka nearly walked into him.

Agnieszka peered over his shoulder: Sarkan was standing at the intersection of corridors, blocking their progress to the garden. Or back to the party, where Agnieszka had yet to pay her respects to the king. The garden was a much more tempting destination, however.

“There you are,” Agnieszka said, as if she hadn’t been the one who wandered away from him in the first place. “You managed to escape the marquess’ son?”

“Finally.” Sarkan had a suspicious glare trained on Solya. And he didn’t even have the excuse of unwittingly stumbling upon him scheming! Well, seeming to scheme. “Dare I ask what you two were doing?”

“You may,” Solya said coolly. “I’ve no intention of answering you, however.” Whatever tentative rapport they’d established had obviously disappeared with Sarkan’s arrival.

“Has Stashek arrived yet?” Agnieszka asked. At Sarkan’s nod, she added, “I should go greet him, then. Are you coming, Solya?”

He blinked at her, then put on that thin smile and made some facetious demurral. He’d slipped away into the shadows before Agnieszka could think to stop him.

Sarkan scowled at the space Solya had occupied only moments earlier. “I’ve already spoken to the king and offered our respects,” he said at length, turning to Agnieszka. “But you can greet him yourself if you’d like.”

She felt obliged to, since Stashek had expressly requested their presence. But when they reached the main room, the press of guests was too close for her to risk breaching. At their centre, the regent was holding court about something or other. He stood at Stashek’s side, closer than most anyone else that Agnieszka had seen in the brief glimpses she’d caught of the young king; depending on one’s perspective, it could have been that Stashek stood at the regent’s side instead.

Stashek’s face was set in the same calm expression he’d worn every time Agnieszka saw him. Unlike Marisha, there had been no opportunity to see him alone; he seemed as distant and unreachable as his paternal grandfather had been, in that endless, too-short week Agnieszka had spent here in the first place.

Perhaps that was the fate of kings. It seemed a lonely existence; Agnieszka couldn’t begin to understand why Marek had scrambled so desperately for the crown. Surely he’d seen what had become of his father, and what the impending burden of it had done to his brother—?

“I can speak to him some other time,” Agnieszka decided reluctantly. Sarkan nodded and led her back into the hall.

Servants had taken their cloak and coat upon their arrival, but Sarkan took her unerringly to the room where they were kept—on a separate rack from the rest of the guests’, along with Solya’s cloak. It was the same design that she’d first seen him in seven years past: an almost impossible white, with the pattern of feathers dyed along the bottom. Agnieszka frowned at it: he hadn’t even stopped to collect his cloak?

She pulled on her own outer layer, then turned and found Sarkan with his coat hanging off one arm, frowning at Solya’s abandoned cloak.

“He still uses that old pattern?” His tone was difficult to read.

“Did you design it?” Agnieszka gathered the cloak up, folding it into a bundle over one arm.

“Back when we were newly-Named.” Sarkan finished pulling on his coat and smoothed one hand down the front: all the little buttons fastened themselves beneath his fingers as he went.

“You were apprentices together?”

Sarkan inclined his head. “Solya’s apprenticeship was the shortest ever for a witch or wizard to be successfully put on the lists, and I was the youngest. You broke both of those records at once, of course.”

“All due to your excellent teaching.”

Sarkan scoffed as they stepped outside, into the cool evening air. “I’m well aware of my failings as your teacher.”

“You have some good qualities,” Agnieszka protested. He lifted an eyebrow. “For instance, you always have warm hands. Mine are cold, by the way.”

“As if I hadn’t taught you three separate warming cantrips,” he sighed, but he shifted closer to her as they walked back to Zamek Orla. She reached out and took his nearest hand. His skin felt almost blisteringly hot against her chilled fingers, but they warmed soon enough.

“I saw Solya in a room with a handsome man,” Agnieszka said quietly. It was late enough that the traffic around the castle had dwindled, though there were still people around. “He reminded me of Marek, a little. I thought they might be scheming something.”

Sarkan’s hand tightened around hers. “Solya schemes constantly.”

“Surely not every second of every day.”

“Even in his sleep,” Sarkan said with complete confidence. She snorted a little in spite of herself.

“You bring out the worst in each other,” Agnieszka said, voicing the thought aloud as it occurred to her.

“He _is_ the worst,” Sarkan grumbled, like—well, like the teenager he’d likely been when he and Solya had first met. His thumb traced over her knuckles in a really distracting fashion, and Agnieszka forgot about taking Sarkan to task for ignoring his own involvement in what she’d said.

The stars were lovely tonight. She could see them any time back in the valley, but it was comforting that the constellations overhead were just the same here in this pit of vipers. Sarkan was still stroking the back of her hand; when she shivered, it wasn’t from the cold. She could practically feel the orderly coils of his magic thrumming just beneath his skin.

“The man was just a minstrel, though,” Agnieszka said, picking up the previous thread of conversation in a bid to avoid starting something ill-advised in the darkened alley they were walking past. “Solya was giving him advice about songs.”

Sarkan blinked at that, his hand going still. “He always wanted to listen to bards and minstrels whenever we had the opportunity.”

“Really?” She couldn’t imagine it: he seemed more likely to pay attention only to the ones written about his own deeds. Another shiver swept through her as Sarkan’s thumb resumed that distracting stroking.

“Are you _still_ cold?” Without waiting for a reply, his magic flared out from the hand wrapped around her own as he cast one of those warming cantrips he’d mentioned earlier.

Agnieszka nearly missed her next step: she certainly felt warmer after, though likely not in the way he’d intended.

That thought was confirmed when they finally reached their rooms and she dumped Solya’s cloak carelessly on the floor—eliciting an outraged look that might have amused her under different circumstances—and pressed Sarkan down on the bed without even bothering with her own cloak.

He had the audacity to look startled, as if he hadn’t been toying with her the whole walk back. She narrowed her eyes at the long row of his buttons and they came apart obediently beneath the shimmer of her unspoken working. Sarkan’s eyes were dark and intent when she looked up again: the predictable response whenever one of them used magic on each other.

Not to be outdone, he muttered a cantrip of his own, the steady warmth of his magic sweeping over her and disappearing her clothes—somewhere. She might get annoyed about that tomorrow morning; there were more important matters at hand now, like Sarkan’s bare skin under her fingers and his lips against her own.

* * *

Her clothes were nowhere to be found the next morning. She didn’t particularly care about the ostentatious dress that Sarkan had conjured for her the evening before, but she’d _liked_ that cloak. Sarkan tried to offer some long-winded, esoteric explanation for the garments’ permanent disappearance but Agnieszka wasn’t in the mood to listen to him going on about workings of different degrees and all that.

She picked up Solya’s cloak, giving it a brisk shake to disperse any dust or dirt that might have accumulated from a night spent on the floor, and pulled it on.

Sarkan faltered mid-lecture, his expression torn between bewilderment and outrage. “I can make you another cloak if you need one so badly.”

“I’m going out and I need it now,” Agnieszka said coolly.

“Then wear one of mine,” Sarkan snapped.

“You didn’t bring any cloaks.”

“I can conjure one in a second or two, you ridiculous—”

“Am I interrupting? I did knock, and the door was unlocked,” came Solya’s mild voice: he was standing in the open doorway. He blinked a little when he saw Agnieszka, then his mouth curled up into a smirk. Her hand twitched to the fastening at her throat, an aborted move to whip off the cloak, as if he hadn’t already seen her wearing it. “I think you wear it better than I do, Agnieszka.”

“I meant to give it back when I saw you next,” she managed, the words probably only audible over Sarkan’s noise of outrage because of her closer proximity to Solya.

“Oh, keep it. I’ve several of them.” His eyes glittered as they swept over her. Probably enjoying getting one over Sarkan, in whatever fashion he could.

“I—thank you.” The cloak _was_ warm. Perhaps he’d worked some warming cantrips along with the spells to keep the white fabric pristine. Or perhaps the heat in her cheeks was from—

“What do you _want_?” Sarkan demanded irritably, coming up beside her.

“You borrowed a particular book from the Charovnikov when you first arrived, and I tire of waiting for you to return it,” Solya said coolly.

“It hasn’t been taken from the library in years, and you need it _now_?”

“I’ve referred to it numerous times and never before felt the need to remove it from circulation, unlike a certain—”

“I’ll be back later. Don’t burn the room down,” Agnieszka said quickly, stepping around Solya; the hallway and escape from the brewing argument beckoned. “Or the castle,” she added dubiously. They both used fire, and who knew what lengths they’d drive each other to.

“As I recall, _you_ are the one who tried to bring the castle down around our ears when you took your exam,” Solya said mildly.

“You _what_ —”

Ugh. Agnieszka shut the door in their faces and hurried off down the hall. Alosha’s forge was within the castle’s outer wall, but she did have to venture outside to reach it. Still, she probably needn’t have even used a cantrip to stay warm for the brief walk across the courtyard, much less a cloak. It was the principle of the thing that counted.

The steady, comforting clang of Alosha working some project was audible before she entered. Agnieszka ducked inside, narrowly avoiding a collision with Ragostok as he went out. He gave her a put-upon look, but didn’t linger in the cold to complain.

Agnieszka settled in the chair in one corner, content to wait. She hadn’t any other pressing things to attend to today, and she didn’t relish witnessing Solya and Sarkan’s little dramas.

At length, Alosha set aside the project—a beaten sheet of metal that was not in any recognizable shape at the moment. She banked the white spell-fire with a gesture before turning to Agnieszka. “What is it?” she asked, straight to the point. Agnieszka appreciated that about her, even more so when compared with how long-winded everyone else at court seemed to be.

“The regent—” Agnieszka started, but closed her mouth when Alosha held up a hand. She muttered a quick spell, activating a ward that had been laid into the forge’s walls to prevent eavesdroppers, then gestured for Agnieszka to go on. “The regent’s trying to marry Kasia off!” The last word was almost a shout; without the worry of someone overhearing and telling tales, Agnieszka felt free to speak in a way she hadn’t since arriving in Kralia.

Alosha raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms over her chest, as if to say, _is that all_?

“And he won’t let Marisha learn how to protect herself! Solya—” Agnieszka bit back the rest of that confession: Alosha and Solya hadn’t been on good terms seven years ago. Maybe Alosha had no knowledge of his lessons with Marisha; Solya wouldn’t appreciate her telling his secrets, and as far as those went, this one was actually rather benign.

“Yes, he sneaks off with the princess to teach her how to use a knife every chance they get,” Alosha said with some impatience. “It’s a useful base from which to learn the sword, which she’ll be able to do once Stashek is crowned in truth.”

“Kasia said it will be another three years. But Stashek will only be sixteen.” It wasn’t that she doubted Kasia; her friend was far more experienced in politics than Agnieszka would ever be. But Alosha’s experience dwarfed both of theirs.

“There’s precedence,” Alosha said confidently. “Archduke Varsha will push to end the regency early, as will the families loyal to the Algirdon line.”

That helped with her unease, but some still remained. “He isn’t—taking advantage?”

Alosha snorted. “Beyond trying to fill Stashek’s head with foolish notions and lining his pocket in little ways when the opportunity arises? No.”

Well, the first part sounded worse, but the second seemed more like something the court would actually find exceptionable. “Embezzlement—?”

“Nothing so overt. He’s not a complete fool.” Alosha almost sounded annoyed about that: if only he were stupid enough to overstep his place and leave them an excuse to force him out of the regency. “Speaking of fools,” Alosha added, looking pointedly at the hem of her borrowed cloak and its pattern of feathers. “You and Solya seem to be getting along better this time.”

“Well, he’s not trying to use me to put some bratty prince on the throne,” said Agnieszka.

“No, he does seem to have curbed his ambitions.” Alosha looked thoughtful. “And he’s found some other diversions since you returned, I suppose.”

“Baiting Sarkan, you mean?” Though he didn’t seem to get much satisfaction from it; neither of them did. Why they persisted in goading each other at every opportunity was surely a mystery.

Alosha opened her mouth, then paused, considering. “It isn’t uncommon for those as long-lived as us to take multiple partners,” she said, apropos of nothing.

Agnieszka nodded slowly. “You mentioned that you sometimes took soldiers as your lover after your husband died.”

Silence fell; Alosha’s wards kept their voices from carrying past the walls of her forge, but also prevented any sounds from the busy courtyard from penetrating as well. Agnieszka clasped her hands together and resolutely did not fidget as Alosha stared her down.

Alosha sighed at last. “Well, you’re still very young for a witch, and not much wiser than you were when you first came to Kralia.” That rankled, but Agnieszka had come to Alosha to be told the plain truth. If that was how Alosha felt, so be it; arguing certainly wouldn’t change her mind on the matter. “If that’s all, I’ve a shield to finish,” Alosha added briskly, already turning back to the project.

“Do you really think this business with the regent will be settled in three years?” Agnieszka couldn’t help asking.

“Yes. Stashek is still his grandson, and his only real connection to the throne.” Alosha lifted her hand, palm up, and the white fire roared up once again: a definitive end to the conversation.

Agnieszka watched her work for several minutes more, then headed back into the castle proper: that ought to be enough time for Sarkan and Solya to settle things.

* * *

It was not enough time for Sarkan and Solya to settle things: their raised voices were audible as soon as she came out of the stairs.

Agnieszka sighed a little as she quickened her steps. The servants that she passed cast her sidelong looks, though none dared to meet her eyes. The door was ripped open just as she reached it, revealing a furious Solya. He had a tome tucked under one arm, so he’d managed to convince Sarkan to relinquish the book at least.

“—needn’t continue manufacturing excuses to come around,” Sarkan was snarling from behind him.

Solya’s face was already flushed with anger, but Agnieszka didn’t expect the spasm of hurt that went across it at Sarkan’s words. It was the same look she’d seen the night before, when she’d accused him of having an ulterior motive for apologizing.

Agnieszka bit her lip and stepped aside, so Solya could pass unimpeded. She felt as if she’d intruded upon a private scene she hadn’t any right to witness. Which was ridiculous. These were her rooms too.

Solya jerked his head in what might have been a nod of acknowledgment and stalked past without meeting her eyes. A few steps later, he bit out the words for his translocation spell, though his rooms were only the next hallway over.

“Couldn’t even close the damn door—” Sarkan stopped mid-grumble, his eyes widening when he saw Agnieszka. He looked, for a moment, like a naughty child caught in the act, though he recovered swiftly enough.

“I could hear the two of you shouting from the top of the stairs,” Agnieszka said, stepping inside.

Sarkan closed the door with more force than was strictly warranted. “Solya’s the one who barged in.”

Agnieszka stared him down, until Sarkan had the grace to look away. “All this over a book?”

“It’s not—” A muscle in Sarkan’s jaw jumped. He took a slow breath then said, more calmly, “It’s the principle of the matter.”

Agnieszka shook her head and went to sit by the fire. Sarkan stalked over to the window, the better to stare broodingly out.

“Oh—” Agnieszka bit back a curse. “I forgot to give Solya back his cloak.”

“He’ll show up again,” Sarkan said, clipped. “Just give it to that peacock then. Or have one of the servants return it.”

Agnieszka rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to bother one of the servants over that. But it did seem likely that she’d see Solya sooner rather than later.

* * *

She saw neither hide nor hair of Solya for the next week.

Agnieszka left his cloak folded on the little table near the door, so she wouldn’t forget about it; Sarkan scowled every time he saw it, but obviously it was beneath him to return the thing himself. He contented himself with conjuring a score of cloaks for her to choose from, each one more ridiculous than the last.

Though the almost disturbingly realistic embroidered heart-tree that he ended on, with actual thread of gold for the fruit, was a marvel. Far too ostentatious for her to ever _wear_ —she’d snag the delicate embroidery on _something_ as soon as she put it on—but the technical skill and artistry were undeniable.

Sarkan looked miffed when she passed over that one without even trying it on, so she suggested he give it to Kasia for Midwinter: it fit with all the absurd rumours and stories that had sprung up around her, and the gold matched her beautiful hair besides.

She settled on keeping the first two he’d made, which were plain—by his standards—and almost too elaborate for hers, but she quite liked the accented greens of the first and the delicate layers of the second, also prominently green but interspersed almost randomly with browns and reds and yellows, like the leaves of the Wood in different stages of life.

Midwinter drew ever nearer, the castle’s halls bustling with people preparing for the celebrations. Agnieszka arranged for the gifts she and Kasia had bought for everyone back home to be delivered—hopefully in time for the valley’s own Midwinter festivities. The rest of the time she spent shadowing Kasia, resolutely ignoring the looks this garnered from assorted courtiers, including the regent; or else working on the problem of restoring Hanna’s garden. She’d never consciously attempted to coax plants to green out of season: the cycle of life existed for a reason. But Hanna’s garden was somewhere in between, cultivated where no greenery would grow naturally. The problem of keeping them alive in winter was the real issue, but there was still plenty of time to mull over what Alosha had told her in the quiet moments.

Sarkan spent the days cloistered in the Charovnikov; he’d been popular with the apprentices at first, before his impatience chased all but the most dedicated away. He seemed dubious that even that exclusive number would all be admitted to the lists, but taught them various spells anyway.

“Will you return that old thing already,” Sarkan grumbled when he came back early one afternoon and spotted the cloak again. Agnieszka was sitting by the window, writing a letter to her father.

“I tried,” Agnieszka said absently. “Solya’s never in his rooms and I haven’t seen him around since you chased him off.”

“I didn’t chase him off.”

“Oh, I’m sure he was equally rude to you.” Agnieszka scribbled down a sentence about the decorative pine trees that she’d seen a group of servants hauling into the castle earlier that day; her father and brothers didn’t cut trees down for such frivolous reasons, but surely they would have been able to find better specimens than the bedraggled things the servants were setting up in the ballroom.

“He—” Sarkan stopped what would surely have been a protestation that Solya had started it when Agnieszka looked up and raised her eyebrows. “He’ll turn up again. He always does.”

The fact that he hadn’t made an appearance for an entire week, when they’d run into him a number of times without even trying before this suggested otherwise, but there was no telling that to the stubborn set of Sarkan’s jaw.

Agnieszka signed her love to the rest of the family, and her name, then dried the ink with a quick cantrip. “I have to send this off. Is there anything you want to send back to the valley?” she asked, folding the parchment and tucking it into her pocket.

“I already wrote to the mayor and all the rest,” Sarkan muttered.

“Wonderful.” She tucked Solya’s cloak over one arm as she reached the door. “Don’t forget we’re having supper with Kasia tonight.”

* * *

The gifts had been more difficult to send than a plain letter; she simply went to the garden and released the folded and sealed parchment into the air with a hummed spell. It would probably reach the valley before the bounty that she and Kasia had purchased, borne on the winter winds that swept the letter from her fingers nearly before she’d finished the working.

Searching out Solya was more troublesome still. She had been trying, in an almost systematic way that Sarkan would probably have approved of if she’d put it to use for any other endeavour, to track Solya down over the past few days. No matter what hour of the day—or night—that she knocked at his door, he never answered, and casual inquiries to the other witches and wizards yielded no sightings of him either.

She didn’t have a lock of his hair, but she did have his cloak; it wasn’t so personal as a ring, but it served well enough for the finding spell. The steady light led her to the Charovnikov—which she’d checked only twice, since Sarkan spent most of his time there and thus would have made it an undesirable destination for Solya. Sarkan was back in their rooms now; the only person currently in attendance that Agnieszka recognized was Alosha, giving a lecture to a group of apprentices.

Agnieszka edged around the open space, following the spell. It led her to a bookshelf tucked away in the stacks. She stared at the spines blankly; they were all on the subject of healing, which wasn’t Solya’s affinity. But the guiding light lay directly upon a primer of minor healing spells. The beam didn’t waver when she pulled out the book, shining through to the back of the shelf—

Of course. She’d entirely forgotten about the reading rooms hidden seamlessly behind the bookcases. There was no obvious mechanism to open this one, so she settled for banging various books pointedly against the shelves until she heard someone stirring behind it.

“Do you _mind_?” Solya hissed, his aggrieved expression ruined by the way he blinked upon seeing her.

“No,” Agnieszka said plainly, and squeezed past him into the cozy room. “Here’s your cloak,” she added, placing it carefully on the nearest stack of tomes. The room had just enough space for a table, some chairs, and a couch along the far wall; the other walls were covered by crowded shelves.

“Please, come in,” Solya said, so silkily it could only be sarcasm. He busied himself with the cluttered table, sweeping all of the parchment into one sheaf that he swiftly covered with a particularly massive tome.

“Is that your research?” She looked around, curious in spite of herself. Jars of coloured powders and other magical-looking ingredients filled one shelf, reminiscent of the supply cabinets Sarkan kept in his laboratory. The other shelf was crammed with books, thinner volumes stuffed lengthwise atop rows of upright books where space permitted. “Is this room _yours_?”

“Of course it’s mine!” Solya’s irritated hiss was belied by the way he cleared off one of the chairs for her, adding the untidy pile of books to an already precarious stack at one end of the couch. There was a blanket thrown haphazardly over the couch as well, and a pillow on the far side. “You’re owed one too, since you were put on the lists—”

“Have you been sleeping here?” Agnieszka blurted out. Solya stiffened, his face unreadable in profile as he stared down at the stack of books. “It’s just—you were never in your rooms when I tried to find you.”

“I’ve been busy,” Solya said shortly. Did he mean his research? His fingers were ink-stained, and there was a splotch on his chin, just beneath his lower lip; perhaps he’d been chewing on his pen. “You’ve returned my cloak, so there’s no need—”

“That was just my excuse to get in the door,” she admitted, sitting down. It would be rude not to, after Solya had invited her in (grudgingly) and cleared off a seat (the better to hide whatever he was working on). This wasn’t going quite how she’d imagined it would—she’d intended to find him in his chambers, with the lush white rugs and canopied bed, as luxuriously decorated as Sarkan’s rooms that she now shared.

Comparing those chambers to this snug reading room was like—like looking at the mask Solya wore at court, and seeing him without all that artifice.

“Do you want—Should I go? We can talk later, in your rooms or—”

Solya sat down across from her, the beginnings of a smirk curving his mouth. “I imagine the servants are already talking, if you’ve been at my door at all hours. You went to all the trouble of making an excuse to meet with me; we can speak here.”

“Right. Of course.” She was still uneasy about the tail-end of the argument that she’d witnessed between him and Sarkan. She couldn’t apologize on Sarkan’s behalf, it wasn’t her place, and besides Sarkan plainly wasn’t sorry about what he’d said. But the words had obviously affected Solya if he’d been holed up here for most of the week; equally obvious was the fact that there was no delicate way for her to broach the subject.

“Now there’s an expression I know well,” Solya said mildly. “Trouble with Sarkan? The relationship he shares with you may be the longest he’s ever had, putting aside the string of girls he picked out over the years.” They both knew very well that Sarkan had never touched any of those young women, no matter what the rest of the valley or the court thought. “His only serious lover was Countess Ludmila and—Well, he _has_ told you about her, has he not?” The mask was firmly back in place, despite their revealing setting, all earnest innocence.

“He has,” Agnieszka said, annoyed. Why she’d thought it was a good idea to seek Solya out when he insisted on being so _infuriating_ —

Solya’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, the only indication of his surprise. “I suppose the countess is the only past lover he’s spoken of to you.”

“Yes—?” Agnieszka paused. Solya smiled thinly at her. “Wait. You and Sarkan were apprentices together.” Solya’s eyes glittered as he inclined his head. This entire time she’d assumed they’d been as bitter rivals then as they were now, but—“Were you lovers? Oh my god, are you _jealous_?” Her voice was rising with every word, outside of her control, so that she was nearly shouting by the end. It was all just—a lot to take in.

“Yes, to the first. To the second: certainly not,” Solya said, the coldness of his voice doing little to hide how badly he was lying.

Agnieszka barely heard him. So Sarkan and Solya were former lovers, who’d—what, split acrimoniously? Obviously there was lingering bitterness there. “This explains so much,” she said absently. “Including why Alosha made a point of saying that most of us take multiple partners—”

“ _Alosha said what_?”

They both jolted when someone knocked briskly on the door.

“Perhaps you might consider speaking more quietly, or casting a spell for privacy,” came Alosha’s exasperated voice, barely muffled by the bookshelf. “Some of the apprentices are _trying_ to use the library for its _intended purpose_.”

Solya was glaring at Agnieszka, as if the reprimand was her fault. Well, she _had_ been the one to raise her voice first.

“Ye—yes, of course!” she called back weakly. Though she didn’t actually know any workings to muffle or silence voices; it wasn’t something she’d previously needed.

“Meddling old woman,” Solya added, not quite under his breath.

“I heard that.”

Solya flinched and quickly brought his hands up, the tips of his fingers pressed together to form a rough circle. A quickly muttered spell to keep their words within the confines of his working summoned a silvery film that expanded from the vessel of his hands to press against the edges of the room. Agnieszka shivered at the cool brush of his magic as it passed over her.

Alosha’s scoff was still audible: Solya’s working only kept sound in, not out. Her footsteps faded a few seconds later. When Agnieszka met Solya’s wide eyes with her own, the hysterical laughter bubbling up the back of her throat was almost impossible to repress. Solya looked away, but not before she saw his smirk, and that did set her off.

“I assure you I don’t mean to come between the two of you,” Solya said, once they’d both calmed somewhat. “I hold no grudge against you.”

“I should hope not, since we’re something like friends now. Or—not,” she added uncertainly, when Solya looked at her blankly. Perhaps he had only been making niceties for appearance’s sake? But the difference between his behaviour now and seven years ago had been so marked—

“I thought you were just too polite to chase me away.” His mouth twisted and he looked away after that raw admission.

Agnieszka swallowed her initial reaction and settled for a light, “As I did your minstrel?”

“He isn’t mine,” Solya said irritably, but his shoulders also relaxed slightly.

“Oh, of course not. You did mention your exacting standards for men.” Teasing him seemed a safer alternative than addressing the elephant in the room.

“Not only men.”

Agnieszka licked her lips. “So your proposal to Kasia was actually genuine and not just to save face?”

Solya smirked. “It can’t have been both?” His expression sobered. “I would have gone through with it had she accepted, but the odds of that seemed exceedingly low; she’d made her opinion of me plainly obvious before then. It was mainly to improve my standing with the court,” he admitted.

“Well, of course _Kasia_ meets your standards, but that doesn’t leave a lot of other options.”

Solya met her gaze then, his eyes glittering; they seemed to pierce into her. “I can think of at least one witch who has caught my eye recently.”

Heat flooded her cheeks; it was her turn to look away, thoughts at once racing in a hundred different directions and utterly blank.

“But I doubt very much this is what you meant to discuss when you sought me out,” Solya said mildly, before the silence could stretch into something truly excruciating. The chair creaked as he shifted his weight. “I promise to listen without interruption.”

“No, I—I think this is what I wanted to speak about.” She’d believed Alosha about the regent. It was the brief exchange about partners that had occupied her thoughts this past week, though she could not have articulated why before now.

Solya’s expression was politely interested when she turned to him once more. It was of course a mask; what lay beneath was harder to discern.

“I suppose I wanted to know what was between you and Sarkan,” she said slowly. “If all the posturing was just over who was the strongest wizard in Polnya—Well, it felt like something more than that.”

Solya raised a single eyebrow.

“Will you—stop that!” She scowled at him. “Either tell me to get out, or participate in the conversation. _Truthfully_ ,” she added, when he opened his mouth.

His expression turned wry. “I’m uncertain what you want me to say,” he said at last. “You know what was between me and Sarkan now.” His brows drew together for a moment. “Why not ask Sarkan? Or did he lie.” The last part came out flat, stripped of any emotion and all the more striking for it.

“I didn’t ask him; he doesn’t like to speak of his past. Usually, that’s no issue.”

“He can be rather secretive when he puts his mind to it.” There was that bitterness again.

She bit her lip. “I don’t want to talk about Sarkan like this without him present.”

“You want him involved in this discussion? You don’t seriously mean to propose we share him.”

Her cheeks warmed once more. “I don’t know! This isn’t something I’ve ever had to consider before.” Though Solya hadn’t sounded entirely averse to the idea either. “But you two can barely last two seconds before you’re at each other’s throats.”

Solya studied her in silence for several long moments. “That’s true. But as you said, my behaviour stems from jealousy. I somehow doubt the root of Sarkan’s animosity is the same.” He shrugged elegantly, the movement studied; as if Sarkan’s reaction to Solya and General Aleksy had been anything but jealousy. Though it only seemed obvious to her in hindsight. “Obviously, you and Sarkan are lovers. I’ve made my interest in both of you clear, and you’ve said we’re friends—”

“That’s not quite true. I do consider us friends,” she added quickly, when Solya’s face shuttered. “But I also thought you only had eyes for men. I’m—not uninterested in you either.”

Solya blinked, then smiled sharply. “Well, who could resist m—”

He trailed off as Agnieszka pressed the pad of her thumb to her lips, wetting it, and leaned across the table to wipe gently at the smudge of ink on his chin.

“You had some ink there,” she said, showing him the dark smear on her thumb as she settled back in the chair.

“Ah—thank you?” He looked and sounded almost dazed, which was far more appealing than his smug bravado.

“You’re welcome.”

His eyes narrowed, possibly in reaction to the amusement in her voice. “Despite what you’ve said, I doubt you intended to negotiate every little detail of a potential arrangement between—us,” he said, visibly gathering his dignity back about himself like a cloak. “Leaving aside whether Sarkan feels anything besides antipathy for me now. There’s no need to rush in to anything; you should think on it.”

* * *

Agnieszka wandered the stacks in a daze for several minutes after leaving Solya’s reading room, trying to process—everything. When an apprentice searching the shelves gave her a weird look—she’d passed them at least twice, possibly more—she decided to go. Where to was—unclear. Not back to the rooms she shared with Sarkan. Perhaps to some other private space where she could think; the garden, perhaps.

Kasia was passing by when Agnieszka found her way out of the Charovnikov. Her eyes widened a little at the sight of her, and before Agnieszka quite knew what was happening she was sitting in Kasia’s suite with a mug of something hot in her hands.

She took a fortifying sip: it was tea, brewed the way her mother made it back in Dvernik. The familiar taste was at once comforting and jarring, out of place as it was in this grand castle.

“What happened?” Kasia asked intently. She was hovering at Agnieszka’s side, her face drawn with worry.

Agnieszka blinked up at her, then it all came pouring out. She’d mentioned Sarkan and Solya’s renewed antagonism in a spirit of annoyance before now, of course; at least Kasia was as surprised to learn about the extent of their shared history as Agnieszka. Her eyes widened with every further confession: every run-in with Solya; Alosha’s thought-provoking words in her forge; Agnieszka’s budding interest in Solya; Alosha scolding the two of them in the Charovnikov; Solya’s own admission of interest, in Agnieszka and in Sarkan; the uncertainty of what Sarkan felt towards Solya—

At some point, Kasia had sat down beside her on the couch. Her expression was hard to read; mostly, she looked thoughtful. Finally, her face cleared and she turned her gaze to Agnieszka; surely she would have some insight on how to untangle this web.

“This minstrel, is he—”

“Who cares about the minstrel!” Agnieszka winced; could this be how Solya had felt when Agnieszka kept bringing him up? “Sorry,” she muttered, taking a large gulp of her now-cool tea.

Kasia waved her apology away. “It seems like everything hinges on Sarkan’s feelings,” she mused, then paused there, possibly realizing what a daunting prospect that was.

Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as all that; Sarkan’s emotional awareness had improved over the past seven years, recent brushes with Solya notwithstanding.

“I do think he feels something for Solya,” Agnieszka said slowly. She hadn’t admitted as much to Solya, in case she was woefully wrong; but Kasia wouldn’t spread tales.

“Aside from all that animosity?” Kasia pressed her lips together when Agnieszka cast her a half-hearted glare.

“He’s naturally suspicious of everything Solya does—”

“—hardly unreasonable,” Kasia put in, grinning.

“—whose side are you on?” Agnieszka complained.

The grin faded. “Yours, always,” Kasia said gravely. “Although I’m not sure how much help I’ll be in this situation.”

Agnieszka pressed their shoulders together, then slumped gratefully against Kasia’s side when she curled her arm around Agnieszka’s back. “The difficulty is raising the subject with Sarkan,” she muttered. “He’ll be suspicious of Solya’s motives.”

Kasia made a thoughtful sound. “And you’re not? Suspicious,” she clarified, when Agnieszka craned her head to look askance.

“No. I could always tell when he wasn’t being truthful.” She might not have known what truth he was distorting or outright lying about, but she’d been aware he was doing so. “He’s serious.”

Kasia hummed again. “Your braid is coming out. Shall I redo it?”

Agnieszka closed her eyes and let out a breath. “Please. It always lasts longer when you braid it.”

Kasia’s body shook with her soft laughter. “I had the patience to learn the more complicated way, unlike some people.”

Agnieszka decided to ignore that. Even if she _had_ learned, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Besides, Kasia’s fingers carding gently through her hair was much nicer than braiding it herself.

* * *

Sarkan arrived as Kasia was finishing her hair.

“Come in!” Kasia called in response to his brisk knock, tying Agnieszka’s braid off.

“Am I late?” Sarkan said drily when he saw them sitting together.

“Not at all. Nieshka ran into me in the halls after Stashek’s lessons and decided to come over early,” Kasia said easily.

“Not literally, I hope.” His gaze swept over her; probably checking for any sign that she had collided with Kasia. How ridiculous.

“Of course not. And Kasia would catch me if I did,” Agnieszka added loyally.

Kasia laughed a little and rose to her feet, cruelly abandoning Agnieszka. “I’ll send for the food. Make yourself comfortable, Sarkan,” she added as she headed for the door.

Sarkan took Kasia’s seat on the couch, so Agnieszka leaned into him: he was warm as always. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

Agnieszka hummed. “Someone told me something and it’s been bothering me ever since. The answer will come to me eventually.” Hopefully.

Kasia came back then, making idle conversation about Kralia with Sarkan for a few minutes until the servants arrived with supper.

Agnieszka rallied somewhat when they sat down to eat, putting in a word here and there. Since she knew the truth of what occupied Agnieszka’s mind, Kasia took her behaviour in stride, but Sarkan cast her several worried looks throughout the meal.

“I’ve been hearing the most absurd rumours. The courtiers get worse with every year that passes,” Sarkan said, his eyes narrowed in irritation. Agnieszka half-expected him to start grumbling about how things had been back in his day.

Kasia glanced at Agnieszka as Sarkan served himself another helping of vegetables, a sly grin on her face. It was the same expression Kasia wore when they played pranks on her brothers; that smirk said, plain as day, _watch this_.

“That reminds me, Nieshka,” Kasia said casually, her expression neutral once again. “I heard an interesting rumour earlier. Apparently you and Solya are an item now?”

Agnieszka stared at her in disbelief. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarkan froze, his spoon raised halfway to his mouth. “ _What_?” she managed. “That’s—not true.”

“So Alosha didn’t walk in on the two of you?” Kasia looked and sounded perfectly innocent. Agnieszka had always appreciated that when they were teasing her siblings; it was a little different being on the receiving end.

“We were just _talking_!” And there was no way news of that had traveled so quickly; Kasia only knew because Agnieszka had told her. Which meant—there was a reason for this. Kasia wouldn’t put her on the spot for the sake of it.

Kasia tilted her head. “But you _have_ been wearing Solya’s cloak.”

“Once! Because _someone_ lost my other one.”

Sarkan didn’t start bristling or protesting at that, which was a bit worrying. Agnieszka couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

“Oh, I thought it must be something like that. I just wanted to see your reaction.” Kasia smiled, her gaze sliding to Sarkan. “You’re right, Sarkan. People really will spread the most ridiculous rumours.”

“Y—” Sarkan’s voice cracked; he cleared his throat. “Yes. Truly.” His face was faintly flushed when Agnieszka risked a look, and it couldn’t be from the modest fire burning low in Kasia’s hearth: only extreme heat gave him any trouble. But the look in his dark eyes wasn’t one of anger either.

Agnieszka took a slow drink of her wine; her mouth was dry, but over-indulging wasn’t the solution either.

Kasia had an air of smug amusement for the rest of the evening, which ended soon after: Sarkan and Agnieszka were both useless as conversation partners.

“Good night,” Kasia said cheerfully.

Agnieszka gave her a narrow look. “You too.” It wasn’t entirely sincere, but judging by Kasia’s smirk, she didn’t take it to heart.

* * *

Neither of them spoke on the way back to their rooms. Agnieszka made straight for the couch and all but collapsed upon it; Sarkan knelt at the hearth to stoke the fire.

“Was it the rumour?” Sarkan asked abruptly, as if he were picking up the thread of a previous conversation. Evidently he was referring to Kasia’s rumour about Agnieszka and Solya, but the context eluded her.

Agnieszka glanced at him sidelong. He was taking an unnecessarily long time to stoke the fire by hand, when he could raise it to the desired level with a word or the slightest flick of a finger. “What do you mean?”

“You mentioned someone had said something that bothered you.”

She’d been referring to Alosha’s words—advice?—but he wasn’t _wrong_ either. And it was as good an opening as any. “After a fashion,” she said. “You and Solya were lovers, weren’t you?”

The stiff line of Sarkan’s back went even more rigid. “Nothing so—formal.”

“Solya said you were.”

“He says many things,” Sarkan said sharply. “Very rarely are they true.”

“So Solya wanted things to be formal and you didn’t?”

“It was never anything more than casual. We were rivals, back then. None of the other apprentices could match me, but Solya came closer than most, and we all knew it. Allying ourselves was only sensible.” There was something raw in his voice, a sharp contrast to the dispassionate way he’d recounted his affair with Countess Ludmila; but he was no longer confronted with her every time he returned to court, and hadn’t been for decades. “We both had ambitions at court, and carrying on together wasn’t conducive to them.”

Agnieszka made a non-committal sound. ‘Allying’ and ‘falling into bed together’ were two different things but she let it pass. “So you feel nothing for him?”

“He infuriates me,” Sarkan snapped.

“You call me infuriating five times a day,” Agnieszka said mildly.

Sarkan’s cheeks were flushed once more when he finally turned to face her, but his expression was stricken.

Agnieszka stood and reached for him, grasping his hands tightly in her own. “I’m going about this all wrong.”

“So there _is_ some point to this?” The edge to his voice was belied by the way he returned her grip, letting her pull him down to sit on the couch.

She stroked over the familiar ridges of his knuckles with her thumb, trying to soothe him. “A week ago, Alosha told me that people like us sometimes take multiple partners. Her meaning escaped me at the time, but I think she was referring to you and Solya.” Sarkan bristled at that, of course. “Or maybe she meant me and Solya. Or—the three of us together, somehow.”

“Perhaps Alosha should keep her meddling to herself,” Sarkan grumbled. In other circumstances, the similarity between his and Solya’s reactions to her interference might have been amusing.

With effort, Agnieszka kept her voice neutral. “So you aren’t interested in any sort of arrangement with Solya?”

Sarkan’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly were you and Solya talking about earlier,” he said suspiciously.

“He thinks you hate him.”

“So I _was_ the topic of discussion.”

“Sarkan,” Agnieszka said warningly. “We both know you’ve been acting like a jilted lover around him.” Even if she hadn’t realized it at the time.

“As if he’s any better,” said Sarkan. Agnieszka sighed and made to rise, but Sarkan tightened his grip around her hands. “I don’t hate him.”

Agnieszka studied him for a moment; he met her gaze with a glare, but that was only to be expected given the subject of their conversation was feelings, specifically his own. “That’s a relief. I don’t hate him either, and I think the three of us could come to an arrangement.”

“What sort of _arrangement_.” He sounded unwillingly intrigued, and annoyed about it.

“I’m—not sure,” she admitted. “We didn’t get that far, because I wanted you to be involved in any discussion. But we wanted to try—or at least I do. I think Solya does too, but he wouldn’t commit one way or the other without knowing whether you felt anything but contempt for him.”

“I could say the same. After I ended things, he—” His mouth twisted. “I suppose I was the one who ended it in the first place.”

“I don’t know what history there is between you. Maybe it’s something the two of you can’t reconcile. But I think you should talk, and then—we can go from there.”

Sarkan nodded, and took his hands out of hers. He rose and headed for the bedroom, but paused in the doorway. “Tomorrow,” he said, not quite a question.

“Tomorrow. I’ll send him a note in the morning.”

Sarkan nodded again and closed the door quietly, shutting himself into the room alone even though it was early yet. The sounds of him preparing for bed were still audible through the door, comforting in their own way; Agnieszka sat staring into the fire, trying not to imagine every way this could go badly.

When she went to bed an hour later, Sarkan was still lying awake. He tucked her close when she pressed against his side, burying his face in her hair. She fell asleep to the steady beating of his heart.

* * *

The next morning, a servant woke them to deliver a note from Solya, addressed to Agnieszka: apparently, he would be away for the day, ‘to continue the research you interrupted yesterday’.

“Typical,” Sarkan scoffed, shamelessly reading over her shoulder. “What can he have to research at this time of year? It’s nearly Midwinter.”

“You never bothered to attend the festivals before I started dragging you out of the tower,” Agnieszka pointed out.

“We’re hardly alike. I don’t want to hear it,” he added, narrow-eyed, when Agnieszka opened her mouth to refute that statement: they had _some_ similarities, after all. “He was always involved in every sort of celebration at the castle, especially ones of this scale. He’s probably avoiding us.”

Agnieszka rolled her eyes. “I thought you said he wasn’t like you?”

“I had to be certain the capital was free of corruption and I couldn’t very well accomplish that from the valley, you impossible woman.”

“Oh, of course,” she said sweetly. As he grumbled at the obvious placating, Agnieszka leaned in to kiss him on the cheek then bade him goodbye: she had a garden to tend.

Restoring Hanna’s garden was an interesting challenge. Agnieszka had coaxed plants to grow before, most notably when she and the walkers planted seedlings where corrupted heart-trees had once stood, but she had never tried to make them bloom out of season. Still, it wasn’t so very different: _keeping_ them alive in winter was the more difficult task.

Crafting the ward to keep the courtyard at a suitable temperature had taken most of the week, but she’d managed to create a system that would in theory absorb the light of the sun to sustain itself when she wasn’t around to supply it was magic. It likely wouldn’t last without her around to maintain it, but she could coax the plants back to dormancy when she left.

She spent most of the day actually working the ward; it started to snow around mid-afternoon as she was waking the plants, but not too heavily. The instant the delicate flakes passed through her ward, they melted, conveniently taking care of the need to water the garden for the moment. The satisfaction of a job well-done buoyed her spirits as she headed back into the castle for supper.

* * *

Solya still hadn’t returned when she emerged; she left him a note to send word of his return along with a time that would be convenient for him to meet them in Hanna’s garden, so he and Sarkan could discuss things.

The last part felt a bit ominous, but Agnieszka was a little exasperated that Solya might have been avoiding them again in truth, despite what she’d told Sarkan. So if he squirmed a bit—well, it was only deserved.

“What were you doing all day?” Sarkan asked, his expression somewhere between curious and suspicious, when she found her way back to their rooms.

She blinked at him. “Could you feel my magic?” The garden was on the other side of the castle from the Charovnikov.

“Only a vague sense of it.” Sarkan set his book aside without protest when she slumped down on the couch next to him, which was convenient: she laid her head in his lap immediately. It wasn’t so involved as cleansing the heart-trees, but the work of raising the garden had taken more out of her than she’d expected.

“You’ll find out—” a yawn slipped out, “—tomorrow. When Solya returns.” She turned on to her back, meeting his disgruntled look. “I suppose you’ll have to be patient.”

He scowled mightily, not appreciating her employing _his_ usual line against him, and picked up his book again. The steady rasp of pages turning lulled her to sleep.

She woke when Sarkan rose, replacing his lap with a pillow. It wasn’t remotely the same, but she was too close to sleep to do more than murmur in protest. She watched through slitted eyes as Sarkan went to the door: apparently, someone had knocked.

The waiting servant gave Sarkan another note; they spoke for a few moments in voices too low for her to hear their words, then the servant left with a bow. Sarkan opened the note as soon as the door was shut, the line of his shoulders tensing as he read.

“What is it?” She sat up slowly, running a hand through her hair. There were hardly any tangles, so Sarkan must have been playing with it.

“Solya. He says meeting tomorrow after lunch would be convenient.” Sarkan dropped the slip of parchment on the table as he walked past, settling back down beside her. “No mention of where he’s been, naturally.”

Agnieszka hummed. “Have you eaten?” It was fully dark outside the window; she’d skipped lunch, to finish the ward, and now she was starving.

“No, but your stomach was growling in your sleep. I asked the servant to send something up.”

She leaned back into his side with a contented sigh. “What would I do without you?”

“Spend all your days in the Wood, frolicking with walkers and subsisting entirely on the fruit of heart-trees.”

“That does sound tempting,” she mused.

Sarkan made an outraged noise, but the teasing made him relax in spite of that; Agnieszka bit her lip to hide her smile.

* * *

Much to Sarkan’s annoyance, Agnieszka insisted that they arrive early the next day: she didn’t want Solya to go into the garden without them. She hadn’t restored it for him, but she also wanted to see his reaction. Sarkan’s too, though there was no risk of him seeing it for the first time without her.

She revised that assessment when Sarkan started complaining about loitering around in the halls waiting. To prevent him from just going in, she took his hand in a firm grip. She intended to tell Kasia about the garden, and perhaps Alosha and the children, but she didn’t want everyone to know about it so she’d left the dirty windows as they were. Sarkan frowned about that too, but at least he couldn’t look out and see.

Solya stepped out of the shadows precisely on the hour, clad in white robes that fairly gleamed, as ostentatious as the coat with its dragon embroidery that Sarkan was wearing. Some part of her was amused that they wore such extravagant clothes as a kind of armour; the rest of her was dismayed that they felt the need for it.

She took Solya’s hand in her free one before they could speak, dragging them to the door. A swift cantrip opened it, and she led them out into the garden.

They stood quietly for several minutes until Sarkan broke the silence.

“Is this where you’ve been?” He couldn’t quite muster the annoyance he clearly wanted to; he only had eyes for the greenery around them. Agnieszka hummed in acknowledgment. “How did you know what it looked like? It was all overgrown when I came here last.”

“I showed her,” Solya said distractedly.

It wasn’t exactly as it had been in Solya’s illusion. Everything was in bloom, not dull and preparing for fall, and with decades more of growth besides. The trees were taller, but she’d mimicked the shapes into which the hedges had been trimmed and tidied the loose stones of the path. The bench at the end of that trail hadn’t required any work.

Sarkan tilted his head, squinting at the faint shimmer of her ward overhead. It was difficult to pick out in the weak winter sunlight. “Where did you get the idea for that?”

“Kasia told me about some noble’s greenhouse a few months ago, in one of her letters.”

Solya finally tore his gaze away from the garden. “This is impressive,” he told her. He glanced at Sarkan, who had turned his attention to the conversation as well. “But we’ve other topics to discuss, unless I misinterpreted Agnieszka’s message.”

“We do.” Sarkan’s tone was neutral, and both of them were obviously wary, but they weren’t at each other’s throats yet. That seemed like a good sign.

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” But when she made to let go of their hands, Solya cast her a wide-eyed look and Sarkan’s fingers tightened around hers. “I can’t fix whatever there is between you,” she said gently. “I was just going to sit at the bench. To give you some privacy?”

Sarkan cleared his throat and released her, taking a small step back; Solya hadn’t tried to hold onto her in the first place.

She’d brought a book for the occasion, though she found herself staring at the pages as often as reading the words on them, not specifically trying to listen to Sarkan and Solya’s conversation but also distracted by the sound of their voices. They spoke lowly enough that their words were inaudible.

“—if I’m to stop bringing up Ludmila, you ought to stop bringing up Marek,” Solya snarled at one point, loud enough for her to hear.

Agnieszka glanced over. Solya’s hands were clenched at his sides, and Sarkan’s jaw was equally tense, his arms crossed. After an excruciating moment, Sarkan jerked his head in a nod. The conversation resumed at its former volume, and Agnieszka returned to her book.

She flinched a bit in surprise when someone sat down next to her an indeterminate amount of time later. Solya smirked as she blinked at him; Sarkan was standing nearby, still on the path, watching them with dark eyes. She hadn’t even heard them approach; the tension between them had—not disappeared, exactly, but shifted.

“May I?” Solya asked.

“Of course,” she said, still off-balance, before realizing that he hadn’t specified what he was asking permission for—

Solya kissed her. His hands were cool on her cheek and neck, but his mouth was hot. Agnieszka leaned in, curling her fingers into his robes so she could pull him closer. She felt rather than heard Solya’s pleased hum.

He drew back a few moments later, his eyes glittering. “As delightful and tempting as this is, I have a commission to finish.”

“ _What_ ,” Agnieszka demanded at the exact same time as Sarkan. She’d nearly forgotten he was there.

Solya looked between them, all innocence. “I assure you, this gives me no pleasure—” the little smirk still on his lips suggested otherwise, as if he wasn’t the one going away alone, “—but the commission is due before the Midwinter feast.”

“That’s tomorrow evening,” Sarkan said, a wealth of judgment in his cold voice.

“Yes, well, certain people have been exceedingly distracting of late.” Solya stood, smoothing a hand over his robes before he slipped away into the shade beneath the trees.

Sarkan’s disbelieving look matched her own, but then he reached for her, using his own spell to take them back to their rooms. Specifically, the bedroom; they’d barely stepped foot inside before Agnieszka undid the bright line of Sarkan’s buttons with a muttered spell.

They’d been more discreet about using magic together since arriving in Kralia, since that usually ended with them tumbling into bed, their magic as tightly entwined as their bodies, and the results could be—unpredictable. This time, Agnieszka didn’t bother pulling her magic back after using it to get rid of Sarkan’s ridiculous coat and all the rest of his clothes too. He groaned when she pressed him back on the bed, his own power rising to meet her.

Time went sideways after that. They didn’t forget about Solya exactly—he was part of the reason they were both so flushed and eager—but he’d also decided to abandon them for his mysterious commission. That was why Agnieszka was perhaps more profligate with her magic than she would be otherwise; she couldn’t speak for Sarkan’s excuse for doing the same, but it was certainly pleasurable.

“I take it your conversation went well?” Agnieszka asked later, once she’d caught her breath. Sarkan was lying beside her, his eyes half-lidded as he gazed up at the canopy.

Sarkan made a non-committal sound, but the way he drew her into another heated kiss suggested that it had.

* * *

All the witches and wizards had rooms in the same wing, so Ragostok was just going into his own room when Agnieszka and Sarkan emerged late the next morning. He eyed them narrowly, but Agnieszka was in too good of a mood to even blush. They’d taken a break for supper, and thus fortified, spent most of the night pressed together in bed.

Agnieszka followed Sarkan to the Charovnikov, where most of the apprentices cast them glances of varying subtlety as they passed. Agnieszka met the gaze of one particularly bold young man until he reddened and looked back at his book.

Solya wasn’t in his reading room, disappointingly. They headed for Sarkan’s instead. It was not as cluttered, though he had a stack of tomes on one side of his table. Agnieszka settled in beside him and pulled out the book from the day before; she was almost at the end.

Sarkan was staring into the distance when Agnieszka finished, the ink on his pen long-dried; he immediately agreed to a walk when she suggested one.

“You know,” Alosha said drily when she happened upon them in the stacks, “I have a distinct memory of teaching you and Solya privacy wards.”

Sarkan stiffened, his cheeks reddening; Agnieszka dragged him away before he could reply. “We’ll see you at the feast,” Agnieszka said brightly over her shoulder.

There was some kind of commotion in the entrance hall when Sarkan and Agnieszka tried to pass through: a large procession for some important noble was just arriving.

“That’s the archduke of Varsha,” Sarkan said. “I suppose the king invited his betrothed to the celebrations.”

Stashek was waiting to greet them; his mouth stretched in a smile, the first Agnieszka had seen from him since their arrival, when he saw the archduke’s daughter.

Agnieszka relaxed at the sight. Stashek wasn’t much older than her eldest brother’s children, but he acted far more mature. It was a relief to see him smile. “They seem to get along,” she remarked quietly.

Sarkan gave her an impatient look: was she still hung up on the idea of love? Kings and princesses didn’t marry for such frivolous things as that.

Agnieszka twined her fingers through his and gave him the most besotted smile she could manage. He reddened again, but he gripped her hand back just as tightly.

* * *

Solya didn’t make an appearance until the feast that evening, slipping into the empty seat on Agnieszka’s other side. He was as perfectly put together as always, aside from the slightly wild look around his eyes.

“Is everything all right? You look peaky,” Sarkan said. Agnieszka bit her lip to keep from grinning.

Solya narrowed his eyes at him then turned to Agnieszka. “When I said I found you distracting, that wasn’t meant to be a challenge,” he said mildly.

Sarkan leaned into Agnieszka’s space and lowered his voice. “I know you like to watch, so we gave you a show.”

Solya flushed red and turned blindly to the table; the food had yet to be served, so there was little in the way of distraction there. Sarkan sat back in his seat, fairly exuding smug satisfaction.

“So, were you watching?” Agnieszka asked innocently.

“No,” Solya bit out, the word strangled.

She’d felt his sight workings before and there’d been no trace of them yesterday, but she could still tease him. “I can tell when you lie, you know.”

“I’m not—” He turned to glare, then saw her poorly-hidden grin. “You’re both insufferable,” he hissed, as Sarkan smothered a laugh.

Everyone rose as the king arrived, and Solya applied himself to the meal as soon as the servants brought out the first dishes. Agnieszka exchanged an amused look with Sarkan over his sulking.

* * *

It was less amusing when Solya insisted they stay for the opening performance once the meal was over. He ignored Sarkan’s muttered complaints, leading them to the outer edge of the crowd, against one wall.

Agnieszka blinked as the minstrel that Solya had been talking with at Count Dunin’s house took the floor. The assembled musicians struck up the familiar chords of the ballad about the regent, which seemed a strange choice for a Midwinter feast, but perhaps that was how things were done in the capital.

The minstrel had an amazing voice, but Agnieszka had heard the ballad too many times over the course of her visit; she didn’t start paying attention until the people around them began to whisper amongst themselves.

The rhyming recitation of the regent’s achievements—battles he’d won in his younger years, the treaty he’d brokered with Polnya when he married Princess Malgorzhata to Prince Sigmund, other deals he’d made to bring Gidna greater prosperity—had been replaced by a litany of misdeeds. Accusations of infidelity, of cheating his business partners, and of ruthlessly using his own children as bargaining chips to increase his own wealth and influence had been seamlessly inserted in their place, following the same rhythm and metre as the original.

It was far more memorable than the real ballad; Agnieszka could already imagine herself humming the lyrics in distracted moments.

“Is this what you were busy with!” Agnieszka hissed to Solya.

“I would like to appreciate this fine composition without interruptions,” he said mildly. “But I would be more than happy to answer any questions you might have about this piece later, in private, _Agnieszka_.”

He said her name like he was invoking a spell; coupled with the promise in his eyes, it was distracting enough that she forgot why she was outraged in the first place.

[epilogue]

“Was any of that even _true_?” Agnieszka muttered at the end, frowning at the bowing minstrel. The applause was rather enthusiastic, led by the visiting archduke; the regent was practically glowing red with fury and humiliation.

Sarkan had heard discontented rumblings about the regent, but dismissed them as the usual rumours spread by those who were envious of others’ success and thought they deserved similar. Perhaps there’d been actual substance to the mutters. Or perhaps the archduke of Varsha simply didn’t like the influence his counterpart from Gidna wielded and sought to bring him down a peg or two.

“What does that matter? People need merely believe it,” Solya was saying pityingly. His eyes widened a little when Agnieszka turned her frown on him. “But yes, there’s truth to all of it,” he added, buckling swiftly before her disapproval. At least Sarkan wasn’t alone in that anymore.

“Well,” Agnieszka said dubiously, “I suppose you’ve turned your talents to a higher purpose.” She stepped into the crowd without waiting for a reply, heading for one of the servants bearing trays of drinks.

“As if I would put my efforts towards lesser purposes,” Solya muttered sulkily, turning to watch her go.

They’d agreed to stop using their past lovers as weapons, so Sarkan held his tongue on the merits of supporting Marek’s attempt for the crown.

There was something Sarkan meant to say, though. He stepped up behind him, leaning in slightly so he could murmur softly in Solya’s ear, “Let me guess.” Solya went utterly still, aside from the fine tremor that traveled up his spine. “The regent ridiculed Marek, and by association you, when you first brought the children to Gidna.”

Solya took a deep breath, as if he’d stopped breathing while Sarkan spoke; a flush was spreading across his cheeks already when he turned around. Sarkan had almost forgotten how easy it was to provoke colour to his face for reasons other than anger, if one applied the correct methods. “And if he did?”

“You’d never forget it.” And never stop seeking a way to exact some kind of retribution in exchange, and take a probably-unwise commission from a rival archduke to that end.

“You give me too much credit,” Solya said lightly; he wouldn’t admit to his involvement in the regent’s humiliation around so many witnesses, though the smug expression on his face was confirmation enough. “Though I did improve another song once; perhaps you’ve heard it.”

Sarkan—hesitated. There was something in Solya’s tone, and the look in his eyes, that made him wary. “Oh?” he managed.

Solya tilted his head, the dark curtain of his hair slipping behind his shoulder to reveal the pale line of his throat. Sarkan wasn’t foolish enough to fall for that ploy; he kept his gaze fixed on Solya’s clever, glittering eyes. “Mm. It was most popular about a century ago; I had to make my version even more memorable than the original. But _Ludmila and the Enchanter_ does roll off the tongue so much more smoothly than _The Dragon and Ludmila_. In my humble opinion.”

Sarkan stiffened. Minstrels and troubadours still sang that damn song even now—

But no one remembered that he was the eponymous enchanter, just as no one remembered that Ludmila had come to him for help. The twisting of history involved in the latter had always rankled, distantly, but he’d been glad when his Name had faded from the song.

“Even after—” Every terrible word they’d hurled at each other when Sarkan realized the depth of what he and Solya felt for each other and panicked, or their cutthroat competition to prove which of them was the more powerful, or the vicious rumours—

Solya licked his lips; it was a nervous gesture, but from the way his mouth quirked up on one side soon after, he’d still noticed Sarkan’s distraction. “You refused to link our names, so I saw no reason to allow her that benefit either,” he said with studied indifference, turning his head to look in Agnieszka’s direction again.

It was the same pettiness as always, one of the reasons Sarkan had wanted to be Solya’s friend before they became the Dragon and the Falcon: better to have that at one’s disposal than in opposition. He’d disdained such frivolity in the years since, yet there was something comforting about the fact that some things remained unchanged.

Likewise, despite what Agnieszka might have thought, Sarkan remained as covetous as he’d ever been of the rare things that he cared about, or the still-rarer people who’d slipped past the defenses life had taught him to raise and carved out space for themselves.

Trepidation flashed across Solya’s face when Sarkan lifted a hand, but it changed swiftly to yearning as Sarkan gently cradled his neck, thumb pressing against the rapid beating of Solya’s pulse. As if he needed further indication of Solya’s interest, besides the way his pupils dilated as Sarkan leaned in.

Solya exhaled shakily when Sarkan kissed him, a desperate little moan that did precisely nothing for Sarkan’s already fraying self-control. As if he hadn’t wanted to get his mouth on Solya’s since that moment in the garden, when Solya and Agnieszka had kissed. And then this infuriating tease had fled before Sarkan could follow through.

He made up for it now. He’d had a hundred foolish reasons to conceal his relationship with Solya from the rest of the court the first time around, but he couldn’t remember a single one of them in that instant, even as the courtiers around them began to take notice, a distant chorus of gasps and whispers that Sarkan ignored.

Solya fisted a hand in the front of Sarkan’s coat, probably ruining the crisp lines completely, when Sarkan made to pull back for breath. Sarkan bit at his lower lip for that, then licked inside as Solya’s mouth parted around a groan.

“Oh,” said Agnieszka. “You started without me?”

That utterly shameless declaration set off another round of hushed whispers, of course. Not that Sarkan had a leg to stand on in terms of shamelessness. Solya pulled back first, clearing his throat; Sarkan felt it working beneath his thumb, and managed to turn his head to Agnieszka only slowly.

She’d brought over three glasses of wine without spilling a drop, which was a minor miracle in itself, but Sarkan was more interested in the hungry look in her eyes. He caught her wrist in his free hand, and translocated them to his—to _their_ rooms.

The landing was a little rough; he was unaccustomed to using the spell on three. Agnieszka stumbled into his side and Solya caught himself against the table, but they all managed to stay upright.

“You might have warned me,” Agnieszka complained, setting the half-empty glasses aside. Somehow, most of the spilled wine had ended up on her dress.

“I apologize,” Sarkan said, though it wasn’t particularly sincere.

“We’ll have to get you out of those soaked clothes.” Solya stepped closer to her, lifting his hands to the laces at her throat. When she nodded, he began to undo them with swift fingers. “Then Sarkan can make it up to you,” he added lightly.

Over Solya’s shoulder, Agnieszka’s dark eyes burned into him. “That sounds like a start.”

What could Sarkan do but obey?

**Author's Note:**

> some minor details that I couldn’t shoehorn in:  
>   
> \- Sarkan and Solya did more than drink wine in the room Sarkan took Agnieszka to on the first day in Kralia.  
>   
> \- around the end of their apprenticeships, Sarkan made the peacock-styled robes Solya wears in his second appearance in the fic. yes, Solya kept the robes all this time.  
>   
> \- in addition to improving the regent’s song and _Ludmila and the Enchanter_ , Solya also wrote the majority of the songs that involve himself. the deeds they memorialize aren’t even that exaggerated, honest!  
>   
> \- Ragostok was the one who started the rumour of Agnieszka & Solya’s involvement after he saw her wearing Solya’s cloak on the way to Alosha’s forge. he did this because he was bored. Alosha gave him quite an earful when she found out.


End file.
